Ghanaian singer Fuse ODG is the latest celebrity to react to the ongoing copyright infringement case between Ghanaian Hausa rapper Kirani Ayat and the Government of Ghana.
According to him, Kirani Ayat isn’t the only musician who has issues with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s #VisitGhana2022 video that he posted on his Twitter page.
He explained that he is also expecting a compensation since the material contained excerpts of his New African Girl music video that he aired years ago.
Read the statement below:
As a Company, we feel that the last few days have exposed an issue in Ghana that goes beyond the Office of the President, Ghana : The lack of respect and understanding of intellectual property.
We have sanctioned works in the past for Government use, most notably, our 2018 record,
“Bra Fie” featuring Damian Marley, which was used as the theme song for the ‘Year of Return; which we launched via our TINA Festival alongside the President of Ghana.
However, no such process was observed in relation to the recent video in question regarding our record ‘New African Girl.’
We sympathise with Kirani Ayat. As creative persons, we sacrifice a lot to be able to put together a song, let alone a whole video with high quality production value.
As a Company, we have stayed true to our own mission – investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote Ghana over the years, which we will continue to do.
Clearly, mistakes have been made by the Government in this situation, but hopefully they can take corrective action to compensate accordingly.
Going forward, the solution must be to invest in more education around intellectual property.
This is something the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture can do both internally and for the creative sector as a whole. Ghana has always been an influential voice in music globally, and a lot more can be done to support artists from an early stage.
In the meantime, our legal team is in discussion with the Ministry and their legal team in order to resolve this issue.
Signed
Fuse ODG
New Africa Nation
Check out the original statement below:
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