VP office quiet as Twitter sanctioned law professor for plagiarising Beyonce

V.P. Yemi Osinbajo likes to see himself as a woke Gen-Xer, but millennial at heart, and he makes a show of this as opportunities come—like he did in March.

But it backfired then, and Nigeria’s No. 2 citizen got shamed for his disingenuousness. 

Not many knew, though, as his handlers managed the Twitter embarrassment. 

“Run the world,” Osinbajo had tweeted March 8, hoping to pump up Nigerian women during the global celebration of Women’s Day.

The catchy line was not his, and he didn’t make it clear it is Beyonce’s.

A Johnny-on-the-spot, @Knowless, noted the plagiarism, and reported Osinbajo to the musician who sang the line in her fourth studio album she released in 2011.

Beyonce, too, reported it to Twitter, and Osinbajo’s hip tweet was taken down, with copyright violation noted on it.

Aside from making Osinbajo, a law professor, an intellectual property raider Beyonce had to deal with, the tweet broke an international law: the Digital Millennial Copyright Act.

Like many other misbehaviors on social media, the violation and the sanction went quickly under the flurries of tweets posted that day. 

No one, including the Twitter bug that spotted Osinbajo, came back to check Twitter’s reaction and sanction, even months after—until Dec. 15.

It has since been trending.

The veepee and his Twitter hands have yet to respond officially.