Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has said he will sue the Performing Musician Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN) for accusing him of intellectual theft.
Recall that PMAN had claimed that the recently held creative summit organized by the minister was part of a proposal submitted to him in August 2016.The outspoken minister described the accusation as laughable.
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In a recent interview, the minister said: ”As a minister of information and culture, I can’t stop people coming to me with proposes, so when a supposedly reputable organization as PMAN comes and says he wants to see the minister and he says we want to organize conferences on creative industry, does that stop me as a minister from organizing my own creative industry, especially when you did not come to me with a blue print to show me how the conference will be?”
“Even if PMAN’s proposal was visible, there was no way at that point in time that I could have asked them to go ahead to do it but where is the law that says that the minister must accept any or every proposal from a group. Your right to organize a conference is exclusive to one person or a person comes to you and say because he has given you a proposal that he wants to organize a creative conference so you as a minister you are stopped, or you can’t do your work”?
“But I can assure you I have instructed my lawyers to sue them for defamation,” he revealed.