US court gives Davido 21 days to respond to Lawsuit

By Aderinola Abimbola. 

A US court has given popular Nigerian musician Davido a 21-day ultimatum to respond to a copyright lawsuit over  an alleged song theft.

The District Court in Manhattan gave  Davido 21 days to appear before the court to respond to the Lawsuit which was filed on April 4.

The lawsuit involves Martins Chukwuka Emmanuel, Kelvin Ayodele Campbell,  David Ovhioghena Umaru and Abel Great Umaru who claimed that Davido stole their song to create a recently released song.

Court evidence claims that the crew shared the song with the musician in 2022, proposing a collaboration but instead, the famous musician allegedly sampled the instrumentals to create his song ‘Strawberry on ice’ without receiving permission from the owners.

The lawsuit also named Emmerson,  a singer from Sierra Leone who allegedly sampled the vocals of the and instrumentals of the song to work on Davido’s song.

The crew revealed that Davido had agreed to settle with a $45,000 payment and 40% royalty split on March 2025, but he failed to honour his end of the bargain.

Davido, however is yet to respond to the lawsuit despite the crew increasing the demand to a higher amount.