CONTROVERSIAL BOOK: Unjust Profit, Intellectual Right Theft, Neocolonialism Dominate Conversation as Nigerians Express Mixed Feelings About Soro Soke Book

Our analyst has discovered undeserved profit generation, intellectual right theft, and the global north’s reintroduction of colonialism through intellectual property rights of the people in the global south as three dominant topics of discourse in the physical and virtual platforms since yesterday as Nigerians, especially the youths, continue to express mixed feelings about Soro Soke, a book written by Trish Lorenz.

Hundreds of posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp demand that the book be withdrawn from various online bookstores, and that the book’s publisher, Cambridge University Press, not make the paperback version of the book available to the public. The use of Google Trends to track public searches reveals a significant amount of interest in learning more about the author, Trish Lorenz, as well as “soro soko” parlance.

Apart from the fact that Nigerians voice their dissatisfaction mostly through social media, one of the youths has also established a petition on Change.org, a global internet platform that allows people to write petitions, get them signed, and have them acted upon by relevant stakeholders. Our analyst identified a total of 131 signatories to the petition, which calls for the book to be removed from online bookstores and the author to be prosecuted for intellectual property theft and the revival of colonialism through book publishing.

In the petition, the petitioner stated two critical areas the publishers and concerned stakeholders should pay attention to and address immediately. According to the petitioner, “This book is intellectual property theft and gross disrespect to Nigerians. It is pouring salt on our open wound. Therefore, publishing must be halted and it should be pulled from all bookstores. (This has been done before when the book “Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology written by Jennifer M Buck, was pulled for cultural appropriation and intellectual property theft.). Public and written apology to Nigerians from Trish Lorenz. This is the right and responsible thing to do. Anything less is complicity in theft erasure and racialized neocolonial violence.”

Our analyst adds that, based on the number of reviews (107) on Google Book, conversation appears to be producing beneficial consequences, as all of the evaluations were negative to the book and publishers. Similar patterns of discourse were discovered by tracing analysis of the evaluations on social networking sites. Because the author was not in Nigeria during the EndSARS demonstration, the majority of Nigerians and other Africans who evaluated the book stated that the author could not do credit to Nigerian youth hopes and resilience. One of the reviewers stated that it is impossible for someone who walked through the streets of Lagos, particularly Lekki (the protest’s site), after the protest to claim complete knowledge of what occurred and the audacity to claim she coined the Yoruba slang for scolding an interlocutor during a conversation.

“Trish Lorenz has been a journalist for more than 15 years. She is a regular contributor to titles including The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Telegraph, among others. Formerly a design columnist at The Independent and the Lisbon correspondent for Monocle magazine, she covers subjects ranging from design, art and culture to travel, politics and human interest pieces from around the world.”