US-Based Nigerian Professor Files Plagiarism Suit Against Sanusi

Source: thewillnigeria.com
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CBN GOVERNOR, SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI

ABUJA, April 23, (THEWILL) - A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Monday ordered that governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi be served with a writ of summons filed by a Nigerian Professor based in the United States on grounds of committing plagiarism.

Professor Victor Dike, an Adjunct Professor at the School of Engineering and Technology, National University, Sacremento, U.S. is indicting Sanusi for copying his works and refusing to acknowledge him as the author.

A statement of claims filed by his lawyer, Mr. E.U. Chinedum at the Federal High Court in Abuja alleged that Sanusi breached Dike’s copy rights at a public lecture he delivered during the 8th convocation ceremony of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State on 26th November 2010, titled Growth Prospects for the Nigerian Economy.

The plaintiff, who is also the chief executive officer and founder of the Centre for Social Justice and Human Development in California, accused Sanusi of copying verbatim from his articles without referring to him as the original author. He said that pages 98, 99 and 100 of his work titled Review of the Challenges Facing the Nigerian Economy: Is National Development Possible Without Technological Capability?, were copied.

One of the sentences alleged to have been copied reads, “the challenges facing the economy are ineffective institutions and dilapidated infrastructure (bad roads, erratic power supply, limited access to potable water and basic healthcare, and in-effective regulatory agencies, etc). The plethora of reforms and policies are ineffective due to institutional failure (Hoff, 2003)....”

Some portions of another lecture that Sanusi delivered at the Convocation Square, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi where he presented a paper, Global Financial Meltdown and the Reforms in the Nigerian Banking Sector, are also alleged to have been copied verbatim from articles originally written and published by the plaintiff without acknowledging him as the author of the works from where the materials that made up his lecture were sourced.

He said that Sanusi copied his materials without acknowledging him as the original author of the works on different occasions, subsequently demanding a sum of N15 million as compensation, the cost of filing the suit and the cost of travelling to Nigeria.

He also asked the court to declare that Sanusi plagiarised his works and breached his copy right, and to issue a perpetual injunction restraining Sanusi from citing his papers.

He asked that Sanusi be directed to retract the papers from the public by removing them from the CBN website, and to be made to make a publication in a national daily denouncing the authorship of the articles.

The court has ordered the bailiff to paste the court's processes at the CBN after the bailiff deposed to an affidavit that the security at the office did not accept service.

Justice Adamu Bello adjourned the case to 31st of May for mention.