What exactly will push United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) to be involved in a case of alleged plagiarism by purportedly using the project material of a Nigerian social development researcher without attribution to her remains uncertain.
Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
The researcher, Adaobi Nkeokelonye, is accusing the UN agency, globally regarded for due process and accountability, of engaging and deploying her intellectual work “Female Genital Mutilation in Nigeria, Telling Stories, Raising Awareness, Inspiring Change” for its services, without credit to her.
In a petition document seen by BusinessDay, Nkeokelonye, who has for several years worked with international and local organisations on a broad spectrum of development issues, said having attended UNFPA forum on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) sometime in 2015, she later proposed further partnership with the Fund to publicise the FGM issues in Nigeria.
“My proposal was to explore a publishable work utilising narrative writing, fiction stories. Following my proposal and by a consultancy agreement dated 29th August, 2015, channelled through a UNFPA sub-grantee Action Health Inc (AHI), I was contracted to conduct qualitative research on the trends and practice of FGM, and to produce a report for publication that included the ‘human angle stories’ of affected women.”
Nkeokelonye said in furtherance of a joint programme between AHI and UNFPA in the area of FGM prevention in Nigeria, her project was completed with an output being the report “FGM/C in Nigeria, Telling Stories, Raising Awareness, Inspiring Change”. This was delivered to UNFPA and AHI on November 20, 2015.
In her petition, she said following the agreement made with the UNFPA officers, her authorial right of the document was preserved and maintained through the course of revision, adding of all fictional stories, design, proofing as overseen by officers from UNFPA and AHI, unto the final publication and distribution of both hard and soft copies on January 17, 2017.
She said, “No part of the work was however written by anyone else as I singlehandedly executed the writing.
“In both the published hard and soft copies given to me by the UNFPA, my position as author was stated on page 1, with my acknowledgments of all the people who supported the whole exercise on page 3.”
According to Nkeokelonye, one year after the publication, her attention was drawn to a major CNN FGM story that referenced the same report. She said the CNN publication inspired calls and messages from colleagues and friends who knew about the report. “It was claimed that the ‘authoritative’ available on the UNFPA website had no single mention of me.”
To her shock, the report “FGM/C in Nigeria, Telling Stories, Raising Awareness, Inspiring Change” displayed on the UNFPA website was listed under their authorship and upon downloading it, it was clear that it had been doctored to expunge my name as author, my attribution of credit for some photographs, and the acknowledgments in the document replaced with a blank page. “Every trace of credit to me was completely expunged from that document.”
She said at no time in producing and collectively preparing this work for publication was an option of anonymity stipulated by AHI or UNFPA or was her right of authorship in contest.
In her investigation, she said protecting authorial rights (where anonymity was not given) and acknowledging contribution of people to publication has not been an issue with organisations; “my findings on examining other publications on UNFPA websites evidences this. Further, practices of organisations I have worked for, like USAID where my authorial rights are fully given in public display supports my claim”
To mitigate this, she said she reached out to the UNFPA officers whom had overseen the project to ascertain the reason for the unethical action. These officers unfortunately had moved on from their positions in UNFPA Nigeria, but in response assured that they were unaware of such changes.
She said her lawyer, Sovereign Wealth Solicitors’ letter to UNFPA late last year demanding a revert to the original version of the report, a letter acknowledging their error and reparation for damages suffered. She said though AHI responded clearly stating that they were not party to or aware of the doctored report on the UNFPA site.
It is common knowledge that no Agency or staff of the United Nations can be sued, but Nkeokelonye is concerned that UNFPA had continued to circulate a spurious version of the report and had refused at the minimum to replace the document on their site and find it worthy to offer an apology for the damage it was doing to someone’s career.
In contrast to what UNFPA Nigeria continues to parade, her website, the Columbia University Library catalogue continues to carry the original “FGM/C in Nigeria, Telling Stories, Raising Awareness, Inspiring Change” with all credit and rights duly stated. It means that two versions of the same report remain in circulation globally.
Nkeokelonye is therefore demanding that her credit be duly restored because ordinarily no one grows when the credit due to them is denied; this is more relevant for a consultant who depends on referrals and career integrity to survive.
