Sinach’s ₦5 Billion ‘Way Maker’ Lawsuit Ended in July 2026. The Ruling Covers Authorship, Not the Publishing Deal Nashville’s Integrity Music Has Held Since 2019.

On 24 July 2026, Justice A. Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos dismissed a ₦5 billion lawsuit against Nigerian gospel artist Sinach (Osinachi Joseph Egbu) and declared her the sole author and copyright owner of “Way Maker,” the 2015 worship song that has since become one of the most performed pieces of African-authored music in the world. The ruling settles exactly one question: who wrote the song. It does not touch, and was never asked to touch, two other rights questions that matter just as much to anyone trying to work out who actually controls “Way Maker” commercially: who administers its publishing, and who owns the master recording.

This record sets out what the judgment actually decided, what a separate, undisputed publishing arrangement already in place since 2019 covers, and what remains undocumented.

What the court actually decided

The suit, filed on 8 March 2024 and numbered FHC/L/CS/402/2024, was brought by Michael Oluwole, a producer and sound engineer professionally known as Maye. Oluwole asked the court to declare him co-author and co-owner of “Way Maker,” to order an equitable share of all licensing and assignment income, and to award ₦5 billion in general damages.

Justice Lewis-Allagoa found against him on every count. The judgment, read in coverage from three separate Nigerian publications, holds that Sinach had already written and performed “Way Maker,” including a prior live performance in South Africa, before she engaged Oluwole to mix and master the recording ahead of its commercial release in December 2015. He was paid for that technical work, on Sinach’s account $300, under an oral arrangement with no written contract.

The court’s own language was blunt. It held that “authorship vests in the natural person who creates the original expressive content,” meaning melody, harmony, lyrics or arrangement, and that “not every person involved in creating a recording is an author.” Producers, engineers and session contributors, the judgment says, do not become co-authors simply by providing technical or instrumental support unless they contribute original creative expression of their own. The court described the suit itself as “gold-digging and unmeritorious” and dismissed it in full.

One song, three separate rights

The judgment resolves authorship, which in Nigerian copyright law is the right that determines who owns the underlying musical work: the composition itself, independent of any particular recording of it. That is the right Oluwole contested, and that is the right the court affirmed sits with Sinach alone.

It is not the same right as publishing administration, the commercial function of registering a composition with collecting societies, licensing it and collecting the income authorship generates. Nor is it the same right as ownership of the master recording, the specific 2015 studio recording of “Way Maker” as a piece of recorded sound, which is a separate copyright from the composition under it. The July 2026 judgment says nothing about either of the latter two, because neither was in dispute in Oluwole’s suit.

Who already administers the publishing

That separation is not theoretical here. A publishing partnership between Sinach and Integrity Music, a Nashville- and Eastbourne-based Christian and gospel publisher and label, was announced on 12 December 2019, five years before Oluwole’s suit was filed and nearly seven years before it was resolved. Integrity Music’s own A&R ambassador for the deal, Les Moir, called it “the publishing partnership between Sinach and Integrity Music,” adding that she had “already written many songs that have become anthems in Africa.” Integrity Music Europe’s managing director at the time, Phil Loose, credited time spent with “Sinach and her husband Joseph” in reaching the agreement. The announcement named “Way Maker” and “I Know Who I Am” specifically as songs the partnership would promote globally.

Song-registry data available through a US mechanical licensing intermediary lists the publisher of “Way Maker” as “Integrity Music o/b/o Integrity Music Europe,” carrying a BMI work number (23487881) and an MLC/Harry Fox Agency song code (WV9XUB), with the registered writer credit reading Osinachi Okoro, one of the name variants Sinach’s compositions are filed under in publishing databases. That same registry record shows Integrity holding the full publisher’s administration share, which is a statement about who is registered to license and collect on the composition side of the song, not a claim of authorship. Authorship and publishing administration are legally distinct, and the December 2019 announcement is explicit that what Sinach signed was a publishing partnership, not a transfer of her writer’s copyright: nothing in it, or in the registry entry, purports to make Integrity Music a co-author, and the July 2026 judgment does not name Integrity Music, mention the partnership, or disturb it in any way.

What could not be established

Who owns the copyright in the specific 2015 master recording of “Way Maker,” as distinct from the composition, could not be established from any document this desk reached. None of the court coverage read for this record addresses the master. The 2019 Integrity Music announcement describes a publishing partnership and does not mention a recording or label agreement. No party in either the litigation or the publishing announcement is on record stating which company, if any, holds the sound recording copyright, and this desk found no credit line, aggregator listing or registry entry naming one. That is a real gap in the public record, not a settled fact this piece is choosing to omit.

It is also not established whether Oluwole intends to appeal, or whether the ₦5 billion figure had any relationship to a valuation of the song’s actual licensing income; no document reached by this desk states what “Way Maker” has earned in royalties to date.

What this means for artists

The most exposed party in this entire dispute, on the facts the judgment recites, was not Sinach. It was Oluwole, who did technical work worth a few hundred dollars under an oral agreement with no written scope, and who then spent over two years in litigation trying to convert that arrangement into co-authorship after the song became a global anthem. His lawyer argued in earlier coverage of the case that the absence of a signed contract worked in his favour, because rights can default to a creator absent a written assignment; the court disagreed on the underlying authorship question, but the case is still a useful warning in both directions. A songwriter who brings in a producer, engineer or session player on an oral, undocumented basis is leaving the boundary between “technical service” and “creative contribution” to be litigated years later, at a cost neither side would choose in advance. A written work-for-hire or services agreement, specifying that mixing and mastering are paid technical services and not a claim on authorship, would have made this suit far harder to bring at all.

For artists further along than a home studio session, the second lesson is about which right actually generates which income. Winning an authorship dispute confirms who wrote a song. It does not, by itself, tell an artist who is licensing that song commercially, on what terms, or where the money is supposed to flow, because that is the publishing administration function, and it can sit with a completely different named company under a completely different agreement, as it does here. An artist relying on a single court win as proof that “the money is sorted” is making the same category error Oluwole’s suit invited: treating one right in a song as if it were the whole song.

Limits of this record: the suit number, filing date, judgment date, judge’s name and the quoted findings and characterisations of the ruling come from three Nigerian news publications’ independent coverage of the judgment, each read in full, which agree on the suit number (FHC/L/CS/402/2024), the judge (Justice A. Lewis-Allagoa, Federal High Court, Lagos) and the judgment date (24 July 2026). The $300 payment figure and the background on Oluwole’s claim come from a Nigerian entertainment site’s coverage of Sinach’s own public statement, read in full. The Integrity Music publishing partnership, its December 2019 date and the quotes from Les Moir and Phil Loose come from a Christian-music trade site’s contemporaneous report of the announcement, read in full. The BMI and MLC/Harry Fox registration codes and the publisher-of-record listing come from a US mechanical licensing search service’s song copyright holder page, read directly. No document read for this record addresses master recording ownership, and no CIPC, Nigerian Copyright Commission or comparable public registry consulted by this desk publishes an open interface that would resolve it independently.