The first time I saw my own words staring back at me under someone else’s name, I felt an ache I cannot quite describe. Every sentence, every metaphor, every night of reflection poured into that piece stolen. Not borrowed, not referenced, but taken whole.
Plagiarism is theft. I know, because my original article carefully researched, deeply thought through, and published in Vanguard Newspaper on August 23, 2025 was stolen, rebranded, and published in a business newspaper in Nigeria under the name of Udo Maryanne Okonjo, who even had the audacity to call it “Side-Chick Economics: The Hidden Billions of Secrecy (Part 1)”. Part 1! As though she intends to build an entire series on an idea that is not hers.
My title was Side Chic Republic: Nigeria’s Open Secret. She changed it to Side Chick Economics: The Hidden Billions of Secrecy. But the words, the reasoning, the soul all of it were mine. My intellectual labour. My voice. My sweat. No reference. No citation. No acknowledgment.
Nigeria is a land filled with brilliance. Every day, ideas are born in classrooms, lecture halls, and late-night study desks. We, in academia, are trained to respect knowledge not only by creating it but by also crediting those who came before us. That is why we reference, cite, and acknowledge. These are not formalities; they are acts of integrity. To borrow a thought without attribution is to break an invisible moral code that holds the world of knowledge together.
Yet, in our wider society, many find it convenient to take another person’s sweat, dress it up in new clothes, and parade it as their own. This silent crime plagiarism is as destructive as it is rampant.
In academia, it would be unthinkable. A student caught plagiarizing risks suspension or expulsion. Globally, professors have lost careers for lifting a few paragraphs without credit. In music and film, lawsuits worth millions are filed over a stolen lyric or storyline. Yet in Nigeria, entire articles can be copied, published, and celebrated while the original author is erased.
Plagiarism is not a victimless act. It wounds the creator, but it also weakens a nation. It discourages creativity, telling young minds that originality does not matter, that all you need is the audacity to copy and the right platform to publish. When a society normalizes such theft, it mortgages its intellectual future. Because no country can innovate on stolen thoughts only on original ones.
We punish students for copying assignments, but reward adults in public spaces for the same crime. What message are we sending to the next generation? That integrity ends after graduation? That ideas only matter when stolen by the right person with the right access?
Beyond morality, plagiarism is illegal. Nigeria’s Copyright Act (Cap C28, Laws of the Federation, 2004) protects intellectual property. To steal someone’s words or ideas is not just dishonest,it is against the law. Yet, we often excuse it, pretending it’s a minor offense. The thief who steals money is branded a criminal. Why, then, do we protect the thief who steals knowledge?
And this is not trivial. Plagiarism has real economic consequences. Nigeria’s most successful industries Nollywood, Afrobeats, literature are powered by originality. Imagine if Burna Boy’s lyrics were stolen before he could record them. Imagine if Chimamanda Adichie’s novels were published under someone else’s name. The world would not know them, and Nigeria would lose the billions their creativity generated.
When originality is devalued, a nation stagnates. Innovation dies where imitation thrives. A country that normalizes intellectual theft cannot progress, cannot compete, and cannot build a global reputation.
The pain of plagiarism goes beyond stolen credit. It is the pain of erasure to exist, yet be unseen. To have your voice muted while another person wears it. It tells every creator that effort does not matter, that recognition belongs to whoever shouts the loudest, not whoever thinks the deepest.
If this culture continues, we will silence an entire generation of thinkers before they even find their voice.
This is why I am speaking up not merely for myself, but for every writer, researcher, artiste, and student who labours in obscurity, hoping their voice will one day matter. Today, it is my article. Tomorrow, it could be yours the student in Sokoto, the journalist in Abuja, the poet in Makurdi, the young academic in Nsukka. If we let plagiarism thrive, we become a nation that eats its own children feeding on the brilliance we should be nurturing.
Plagiarism is not just an academic offense. It is a national disease. It infects our publishing houses, our classrooms, our media spaces, even our governance culture where borrowed speeches and recycled ideas masquerade as originality. Until we confront it, Nigeria will continue to consume other people’s ideas while killing its own.
Editors must fact-check. Publishers must verify. Academic institutions must enforce. Regulators must act. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye. When gatekeepers sleep, thieves thrive.
And let us not underestimate the emotional cost. The theft of intellectual labour cuts deeper than material loss. For the true creator, ideas are not mere words on paper, they are extensions of self fragments of thought, memory, and spirit. To steal that is to violate something sacred.
This is not about one stolen article. It is about the soul of Nigeria’s creativity. If we fail to defend our thinkers, we will have no future worth defending. Nations are not remembered for what they copied but for what they created.
The Copyright Act already criminalizes plagiarism. What is missing is enforcement and outrage. We must begin to name plagiarism for what it is theft and punish it wherever it appears. Anything less is complicity.
Today, it is my work. Tomorrow, it could be yours, your child’s thesis, your friend’s poem, your colleague’s research.
Nigeria must now decide, do we want to be a country of original thinkers or a graveyard of stolen voices?
The post Plagiarism: The silent crime that robs nations of ideas appeared first on Vanguard News.
