#NosaIgbinedion #RiseOfTheOrisha #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

I will have to mention Nosa’s agents #TheAgency #TallAgent in this thread because they are aware of the particulars of this case and in full knowledge that Nosa had me issued with a police warning then caution in order to silence me, when in fact, I am the injured party

In this situation. Nosa’s agency, @tallagent have just told me they can’t do anything as he was not their client at the time. The letter I received from their legal rep (a black woman) says contact Nosa directly. In full knowledge of the above.

Several people must be dragged in this situation. How long is it going to take for someone to do the right thing? #NosaIgbinedion #RiseOfTheOrisha #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha #TheAgency #TallAgent

If this isn’t making sense, let me start right at the beginning and continue sequentially. But first, a brief overview of the central issues #NosaIgbinedion #RiseOfTheOrisha #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha #TheAgency #TallAgent

This is about intellectual property infringement and ultimately theft. It is about writing a screenplay + filming a series based on a story Nosa has NO rights to having neither licensed nor bought said rights from me as the author. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

This goes beyond being a mere IP dispute. The story at the centre of this dispute is my emotional property. It is filled with various traumatic incidents I HAVE LIVED. It IS NOT Nosa’s story. It is MINE #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

Given the above, there are several issues around moral bankruptcy and unethical behaviour on Nosa’s part, and now on the part of his agents, at play #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha #TheAgency #TallAgent

To make sense of all of this, let me go back to the beginning. I met Nosa Igbinedion in September or October 2014, after moving to London to commence my SOAS History degree. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseoftheOrisha

We met at a workshop we were hired to co-facilitate in Southwark for Black History Month. I was an emerging but unknown author. Nosa’s Oya #RiseOfTheOrisha taster had just gone viral. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

As mentioned in an earlier thread, my daughter was in Scotland with my father + some pretty heavy stuff was coming up for resolution for me at that time. I’d been shedding skins, so to speak, since my trip home in 2012 #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

All of this to say, when I first met Nosa, I was in a vulnerable position. Nosa knew that, and in true psychopath style, immediately began exploiting the situation. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

He began exploiting the situation the second I recited the opening of my novel in progress to him during one of our sessions. His jaw dropped open and he told me I was the ‘best writer’ he’d ever met. I believe he used the word ‘genius’ #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseofTheOrisha

I’ve explained a little about why I am able to recite my work from memory. It harks back to my childhood training in The Redemption Stars. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

While Nosa was reading comic books, I was handling texts he has never read in fullness and since openly rubbished, despite the fact that he is drawing from MY WELL, albeit 2nd hand by stealing from me #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

I have to state for the record that I don’t understand that degree of ignorance blended with arrogance. How can you rubbish things you’ve never engaged, while stealing from someone who has rigorously engaged them? #IntellectualDishonesty #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

Back to 2014. It was after I’d recited my novel prologue that #NosaIgbinedion began insisting that I write films for him, and immediately, “not in a couple of years” despite my having never engaged that medium + being overburdened with MY OWN work #YemojaRiseofTheOrisha

I told #NosaIgbinedion I was up for working with him but it would have to wait as I had a lot on my plate. He said it was fine and continued to play sycophant because he’d seen something he wanted and needed. #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

After the workshop concluded, I didn’t really speak to #NosaIgbinedion for a few months. I was swamped with work. Academic + creative. I was struggling academically. I’d entered my course in the 2nd year + it had been many years since I’d been in such an environment

In short, I was a bit lost. I also unexpectedly found myself in the limelight when I won a Children’s Manuscript prize. It was an overwhelming time for many reasons. #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha #NosaIgbinedion

The whole time, I was looking for somewhere for my daughter + I to live. I was going up to Manchester to see her every fortnight, as we were both struggling with the separation, but trouble was brewing in the family home, notably with this antagonist younger sister of mine.

But I digress, I will touch on that later. It wasn’t until April 2015 that I found somewhere suitable in London. I was effectively starting from scratch. I brought along one or two pieces of furniture + things with sentimental value, but the flat was sparsely furnished for months

It wasn’t suitable for Kiki. It bears noting that ALL my SOAS essays were late. Every single one. I’d missed the introductory stuff - how to use the library, accessing academic books + journals online, all of it. I was in the deep end treading water, about to drown

I also had a really nasty writer’s block that I couldn’t shake until I sat my exams in May. The very first piece I wrote in 2012/13, delved into my ancestral cosmologies/ontologies. I was writing about God + the cosmic hierarchy of spirits because I’d just encountered them.

In April 2013, I had the first of what I can only describe as a series of Theophanic encounters. Visitations from Jehovah God. Mostly in my living room in different properties. Surreal, bizarre stuff that I can’t dismiss, because the surreal has been coming in thick + fast

This Theophany in April ‘13 came after my trip to Nigeria in December/January 2012. When I returned from that trip, something came with me. I couldn’t see it. I could sense it. An ancestral spirit. Something I’d previously discerned in my mother without realising.

Between January + April 2013, this thing was tormenting me. It stank of death. I don’t know what it was. It culminated in an incident on Good Friday, 2013. My daughter was with my dad for the Easter holiday so I was alone.

I had gone to bed but shortly before, discerned that spirit in my room. I fell asleep. I dreamt of my maternal ancestral seat, Afaha Oku, was my living room. I saw my favourite aunt alongside a guy I’d gone on a couple of dates with, looking concerned at something on the ground

They were both praying in tongues. When I looked in the direction they were looking, I saw myself, lying on red earth, dead. My face melting into the dust. That same moment, the same ancestral spirit began presenting to me. I woke up in horror. I felt surrounded by death.

That spirit was everywhere. I could almost taste it. So I got up, went downstairs and fell prostrate on the ground. I poured out my soul to my Maker and He visited with me, that early morning in my living room.

I felt my heart beating for the first time in around 12 years. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had begun writing something in Nigeria but my laptop had be stolen during a break in in March ‘13. So I sat down at my desktop + began to write.

The piece, Editöngö, was a creation + fall narrative. A thing I didn’t understand for a year. I wasn’t sure what I’d written. There was a narrative arc but in no clear style. In hindsight, it read like the book of Genesis.

I submitted it to a contest + much to my surprise it was long listed. But the editor I was working with didn’t like it. I was told there are too many unpronounceable names + it was confusing to follow, especially the fall narrative so I should focus on the creation narrative.

I didn’t know what I was doing and the work seized up. My words turned to water. The more I tried to work that piece, the more illegible it became. I ended up missing the deadline + it went to print in an absolute state. It was awful. I finished it later. But that was awful

A long meandering way to say that where the writer’s block came from that so badly impacted my academic work that year. There was other stuff going on concurrently. #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha #NosaIgbinedion

After the Theophanic encounter in 2013, there was strange spiritual stuff happening on a regular basis. A Voice began speaking out of my heart. I was having a flurry of lucid + precognitive dreams + just general precognition. I was dreaming of things that later happened...

Of people I’d never met but would later meet, lots of weird stuff. At the same time, long buried pain is coming up for resolution. I’d be out and start weeping at the drop of a hat. Abasi Ibom was healing me. It was messy. And tearful. And that is when I met #NosaIgbinedion

At a time I had walked away from relatives, old haunts, toxic friendships. I was isolated and I was vulnerable. And just as the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, enter this man. #NosaIgbinedion #yemojariseoftheorisha

Some time in early 2015, I started sharing work I had written with Nosa. He was also sending work he had written to me. We began talking a lot more around March/April ‘15. #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseOfTheOrisha

The conversations were centred around work, life, my house hunt. When I moved to upper Edmonton, #NosaIgbinedion told me someone had shot at him in that area. Shot. At him. Someone else had apparently tried to stab him. I no longer have to wonder why #yemojariseoftheorisha

I don’t condone violence save in exceptional circumstances. If only those people had finished the job, I wouldn’t be tweeting this thread now. I’m kidding. (Only just). On a serious note, what kind of energy are you putting out for people to be shooting at you?

I was really concerned by that story, so much so that I almost didn’t move to Edmonton. That’s not something you want happening around your child. I was so concerned that I spoke to one of my lecturers about it. You know what he told me? He said, “Mary you need better friends.

“None of my friends get shot at.” That’s what one of my lecturer’s told me. As he was saying it, it felt important. Do you know how those words have been haunting me these 4/5 years? #NosaIgbinedion #YemojaRiseoftheOrisha

Before meeting #NosaIgbinedion, none of my friends have been shot at either. Or stabbed at. At least to my knowledge. There are kids I went to school with who’ve been shot + stabbed. But we weren’t friends like that. There’s a whole heap of wisdom in what that lecturer said.