Tony Ifeanyi Nwose, owner of NiteOn Store, an online shopping website, has been accused of advertising artworks belonging to a handful of Nigerian artists for sale, without their prior knowledge and approval.

The affected artists, who spoke to FIJ on the issue, said Nwose has, over time, been putting up images of their works for sale on his site, and for ridiculous amounts.

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“Once in a while. I search randomly for my name on Google to see the results that would pop up,” said Etinosa Yvonne, one of the affected visual artists, while speaking to FIJ.

“Yesterday, I decided to do same just to be sure that everything was fine, in terms of my brand. This time around however, I decided to do an image search of my name. That was when I saw one of my works on NiteOn’s website.”

Etinosa added that prior to her discovery, she was never aware the online outfit was advertising her work on its site for sale.

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“It was also quite shocking when I saw that he had displayed my work for a price tag of N10,000. There was no way I would have even chosen to sell my work for that kind of amount.

“If I was going to sell my work, it will never be through a site. It will be through a proper exhibition. I find this very ridiculous and unacceptable. People like him should be prevented from making a fortune out of other people’s hardwork”

FIJ would later gather that Nwose had, over a period of time, picked artists’ works randomly from various websites to advertise them for sale on his site.

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Ade Okelarin, a UK-based Nigerian artist popularly known as Asiko, also had his works illegally put up by Nwose on the site.

“It was after I sent a direct message to whoever it was that was managing the site on Instagram that they said they would pull the artworks that they had already displayed down,” Asiko told FIJ.

“This is quite unacceptable. Why would anyone want to put up people’s sweat for sale without first getting proper permissin?”

It was after the London-based artist accused Nwose of the illegal act that he said his plan was to display the works first, while looking for ways to get their owners to work with him on his project.

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When Williams Chechet, a Lagos-based artist who also had his works displayed without approval by Nwose, challenged the site owner, the latter claimed he had sent several emails to the artist but got no response.

What then followed was the display of the artist’s works on the site.

When FIJ reached out to Nwose via his official handle, he did not respond to all the questions asked.

According to the re-codified Nigerian copyrights law of 2010, infringements carry criminal liabilities with penalties of fine and terms of imprisonment.