It has come to our attention that our author, Hanif. A. Mohammed called a press conference on Friday 17th March 2017 alleging that we, Cassava Republic Press, are in breach of the following agreement: not paying royalties when due, pressured into signing a contract and conspiring with JAMB to violate his copyright through the use of his book for the third year without informing him. These allegations are blatantly untrue and are attempt to defame our brand. Instead of trial by media, the author’s contract is explicit about actions in case of breach of contract. The author and his lawyers should have evoked this clause but they haven’t.



Contract Pressure: These allegations represent a failure to understand basic publishing contract. In 2014, the author’s book ‘Last Days at Forcados High School’ was selected as a core text for 2014 – 2016 (two years) by JAMB. In order to prevent piracy of the book, we made it a precondition for use of the book that JAMB sell it alongside the registration form at a significantly reduced price. This way both author and publisher can earn from our labour and intellectual property. Since all our early contracts had no clause about royalty terms for bulk purchases, we asked the author to sign an addendum to reflect “bulk” and “export” discounted sales. Through negotiation with the author’s mother and an SAN law firm, the author signed an addendum and we proceeded with finalising our agreement with JAMB to deliver the book. We therefore fail to understand the author’s retrospective claim of being pressured.



Non-Payment of Royalty: As contractually agreed, the author was sent his first royalty statement for this special sale alongside his standard sales royalty statement in December 2015. Payment was made on 31st March 2016. There’s a standard three-month gap between issuing the royalty statement and payment. This is to allow for any queries by the author. We received no such query. For the second year, another statement was sent to him in December 2016 at the time due. Payment is not due until 31st March 2017. However, we wrote to him on 17th March 2017 stating that we cannot pay the monies due until the legal dispute he began has been resolved.



A month after the first royalty money was paid, the author claimed that his statement and the money paid does not reflect the number of candidates registered for JAMB’s UTME in the public domain. We explained to him that be that as it may, royalty can only be paid on monies received and not on amount of books supplied or figures in the public domain. In the presence of his lawyer at the time, we informed him that contractually, he has a right to look into our accounts as evidence of inflows from the sales of his books. He declined, stating that his royalties must reflect what is in the public domain irrespective of how much we have received for his book.



This is an unreasonable request which we duly refused. His lawyers then served us a notice of arbitration. As both Parties could not agree on an arbitrator we applied to court to appoint an arbitrator and assignment is still pending. The resolution of this matter has been further delayed because the author keeps changing his counsel (three different law firms so far) in the middle of the process, frustrating the case and undermining the efforts of our lawyer, Prof Sodipo.



M.O.U: The author’s other claim is that we did not share the MOU signed with JAMB with him. He never asked for an agreement from the outset until he started his legal proceedings. From our perspective, the JAMB deal is like any other standard bulk distribution arrangement between a publisher and a buyer; the signature of the author is not required. We did however inform him of the details of the contract.



Conspiring with JAMB: Our final agreement with JAMB was for two years (2014 – 2016), however, like the author, we had hoped that the project would continue for a third year because we still have a few hundred thousand copies of the book in our warehouse which we cannot sell in the open market because they have “Not for sale” imprinted on them. This is a huge loss that has to be borne by us and not the author. Much to our disappointment, JAMB, decided to discontinue ‘Last Days at Forcados High’.



The transaction with JAMB has been an inspiration to publishers in Nigeria and across the continent in their fight against piracy. The JAMB transaction foiled the efforts of pirates who are now struggling to offload their edition of the book for N100. Had we gone to the open market to sell the book as many publishers before us have done, there is no way the author would have been able to sell over two million copies and the revenue he has earned and is still to earn from 2016 sales. This is an amazing opportunity for publishers and authors in Nigeria to truly earn from the fruit of their labour.



It is indeed unfortunate that the author would choose a media trial rather than wait for the legal process he instigated to conclude. His action is an attempt to defame our company’s good standing in the court of public opinion. It’s a pity that the author would say that he has not been paid royalties since 2014 when in the first year of the JAMB transaction he received a sum well into the eight figures in royalties based faithfully on actual sales we received, with another payment still pending.



Rather than celebrate the ingenuity that has enabled the JAMB deal with its potential to curb piracy and protect intellectual property in the country, this has been a disappointing process dealing with Hanif’s protestations and his continually changing team of advisors’ lack of understanding about contracts and the implication of this kind of structuring to the Nigerian publishing eco-system. Still, we are confident that our company has behaved honourably throughout the process.

Op where's your sauce

This is what happens when trust goes missing suddenly...

That's why before entering into a contract take all the time and look at possible hitches that will come about the contract in the future and try to put in clauses that will help you to not suffer enough damages in the contract..

As this has happened it has happened and I think an understanding can be reached though but I feel the author should understand that it's his hard-earned work quite alright it might actually be that what's in the public domain may not tally with what's on ground..

But all in all I hope a peaceful resolution I'd achieved soon