The ‘stolen stories’ that allegedly got Oprah’s backing
The book was a major hit, bringing together stories by notable African writers including Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Muthoni Garland, Caine Prize finalists, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe, EC Osondu, actor David Omwange, Chika Unigwe, Jude Dibia, Rosie R and Duchess Lilian Koki to mention but a few. It had 18 short stories from countries […]
The book was a major hit, bringing together stories by notable African writers including Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Muthoni Garland, Caine Prize finalists, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe, EC Osondu, actor David Omwange, Chika Unigwe, Jude Dibia, Rosie R and Duchess Lilian Koki to mention but a few. It had 18 short stories from countries as far apart as Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and Zimbabwe. The book, available only on Amazon.com promptly became a sensation. One reviewer, Richard James said, “it is high time that the rest of the world started reading African literature. This book will change your perception about African literature, and don’t be surprised when you get addicted to African stories.”
Not long after the book’s release, it was reportedly endorsed by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Her endorsement of Uwem Akpan’s collection, Say You Are One of Them, made the book a huge global success and Africa’s Best Stories was set to follow, that was when the bubble burst. A certain Molara Wood, a Nigerian writer, whose story, The Beaten Track, was included in the anthology said it was done without her permission.
That was when it emerged that all the writers whose stories appeared in the anthology had no idea the anthology was in the offing, they had not been consulted nor their permissions sought, there was no arrangement for them to benefit from their works.
Chika Unigwe, whose story was also featured in the anthology said in a correspondence, “I was alerted to this book by a writer-friend whose story appears in it too. We were not informed of this anthology (before it was published), and we certainly did not give our permission for our stories to be in it. I have since spoken to some of the other writers whose works appear (or are purported to appear in the anthology) and they, like us, were not approached for permission for their works to be so used. The publisher has shown disdain for our profession by simply stealing our stories and publishing them.”
Most of the stories have obviously been published on various online sites from where the StoryAfrica team had chosen them as some of Africa’s best, worthy of being included in the anthology. Those behind the scam made matters worse when they, instead of addressing the issues, resorted to name calling. Mr. Nsehe, the brain behind the project had his friends float several blogs dedicated to rubbishing the image of Molara Wood, who was actively championing the crusade against the faceless group now called the ‘story thieves’. His friends tried to rally students of Daystar University to come to his defence by rubbishing Wood’s claims on a special blog created for the purpose. The blog was called “Molara Wood is Dumb” where unprintable write ups about Wood were posted. Those behind the blog promised to use their IT skills to dismiss her claims and intimidate her into giving up her claims.
This generated a counter reaction from other writers and writers’ body, who used the internet to intimate other writers of the ongoing battle and urged them to rally to support Wood and the other writers. Petitions were written to the University authorities about the conduct of their students.
It also emerged that the claimsthat Oprah had endorsed the book and plans to host it on her book club were fabricated by those behind the scam book.
Where it went wrong.
StoryAfrica, in defence of its self, said it never meant to illegally use the stories and that they had planned to sign deals with the authors. They claimed they had been scammed by a woman, also a student, who took responsibility of getting permissions from the authors. Nsehe admitted this to the editor of Books Southern Africa, an online magazine when he wrote to clear the air.
“When we started this project at school, we mobilized people and asked students to submit their favourite short stories, poetry and art. We made a final selection of 18 works (all of which were included in the book). When it came to the issue of permissions and copyrights, a lady in the school called [name withheld], convinced myself and the rest of my team that she had contacts with most of the writers in the collection. It was easy to believe her because we all knew she had interned in one of Kenya’s leading publishing houses in the past. We paid her some money, about Ksh 100,000 to collect permissions and sign copyright contracts. We did that sometime in December 2009. By March this year, she returned with copies of signed copyright permission contracts. She explained to us that she emailed, faxed and phoned these writers to get these permissions. Looking back, we now know she was a scammer. The documents she gave us looked so genuine and real and had signatures and all of the supposed writers. We did not know they were fakes until you first wrote this story three weeks ago, and we received complaints from authors. Also, when E.C Osondu wrote to me through my facebook page confronting me for using his story, I began to suspect something was amiss.”
But the scam did not end their apparently as it emerged StoryAfrica never had Oprah’s endorsement. The whole thing was fictionalised with the permission of Nsehe, as he admitted in the correspondence. He and some of his friends sat down somewhere and drafted a press release claiming Oprah has endorsed the book, a gimmick to gain cheap popularity.
“As for the Oprah issue, it was a gimmick (which regretfully, I endorsed). One of my friends came and suggested that we used the power of Oprah to boost sales. At that point, it seemed like a smart idea and so I gave the go-ahead. He drew up a Press release and sent it out to news sites and all. I didn’t think it would be much of an issue, but it raised an ethical storm,” Nsehe said.
The negative publicity has finally forced Nsehe to shut down the project and tender apologies to all the writers involved, particularly Molara Wood. He took responsibility for the entire scandal and has asked that copies of the books be withdrawn from circulation. He explained however that he never asked nor encouraged his friends to launch a hate site targeting Wood, saying they did that drunk on their zeal.
But the damage has been done already. For a project with potential such as displayed by this anthology that could have taken African writing to another dimension, it was very unfortunate that it was ruined by a scam of monumental proportions.