Genge Supremo Nonini To Sue Safaricom for Infringing on His Copyright

Genge supremo Hubert Mbuku Nakitare, commonly known by his stage name Nonini is looking to take legal action against Kenya’s largest telecommunications company, Safaricom.

The ‘manzi wa nairobi’ hitmaker says that the telco company is infringing on his copyright after it used his ‘Gigagagaga’ lyric without his consent.

Nonini says that Scanad Africa, a digital marketing agency wrote to his team on behalf of Safaricom asking to use the said lyric to advertise the 1GB data bundle valid for 24 hours.

His manager, he says, then wrote back to the agency with a quoted amount of money the telco would have to part with. But the agency later informed him that Safaricom could not afford to pay for the rights to the lyric.

A day later, Nonini, 35, divulges that Safaricom ran the advert including lyrics from his song Manzi Wa Nairobi without his consent.

“This is the don’t care attitude that musicians face in this country where intellectual property is taken advantage of by corporates time and time again. They have to be held accountable at some point,” he says.

Read: IEA’s Kwame Owino is the Ignorant, Flip-Flopping Telcoms Economist of Kenya

This comes a day after Nairobi Senator, Johnson Sakaja asked media houses to pay for royalties they owe musicians or risk deregistration.

“In fact, we want to see them clear the backlog of the payments or their licences be suspended until they clear the same,” he said.

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