The Adedibu Family Wants ₦500 Million Over a Movie, and the Filmmaker Says “Show Me the Timestamps”

Forget Hollywood. Forget the Oscars. The real blockbuster this week is happening between two law firms, and nobody is even selling popcorn.

Here is the gist. There is a film called Adedibu: Alagbara Ibadan, about the late Lamidi Adedibu, the Ibadan political powerbroker who died in 2008. It was produced by Seun Oloketuyi of Ultimate Communications and appeared on YouTube in early October. Lere Paimo plays Adedibu, with a cast that includes Segun Arinze and Afeez Oyetoro. As of the last report, the film is online, and the censors’ board has rated it 15.

Then the family’s lawyers entered with a letter dated 5 October, as reported by Premium Times. They say the film was made without consent, contains “grave untruths, fabrications and sensational falsehoods,” and shows their father’s private life and bedroom in a way they find offensive. They also object to the “amala politics” and election-rigging portrayals.

Now here is the part I love. The letter gave the filmmaker 48 hours. Forty-eight! In this country, 48 hours is how long it takes NEPA to promise to restore light. You cannot take down a movie, record a three-minute apology, publish another one in the Nigerian Tribune, and find ₦500 million in 48 hours. I have seen people struggle to find ₦500 for data.

The demands, by the way, are a full menu: take down the film, preserve the raw footage, never make another word about Adedibu without written consent, apologise on YouTube for 30 days, and pay ₦500 million. Or, they warn, they will petition the police cybercrime unit and sue for ₦1 billion. At this point, the family is not asking for damages, they are asking for the entire film industry.

And the producer? Calm as a man holding the last bottle of cold Fanta. His lawyers replied on 7 October, rejecting everything. Their basic position: every fact in the film is in the public domain, a deceased public figure’s relatives do not usually need to approve a historical account, and please tell us exactly which lines are false, with timestamps and evidence. “Timestamps,” my dear. The man wants minutes and seconds. Somebody is going to be watching this film frame by frame with a notebook, like WAEC marking.

To be fair, none of this has been tested in court. The family disputes the film’s claims, the producer defends them, and I am not going to tell you who is right. The company says the film is a tribute and that it never took money from anyone for it.

But the funniest thing is the deeper truth. In Nigeria, everybody loves a biopic until it is about their own father. Then suddenly every scene is “sensational.”