The public conflict between gospel singer Mercy Chinwo and her former manager, Ezekiel Onyedikachukwu, popularly known as EeZee Tee, is around money, contracts, and fraud accusations. A summary of everything that has occurred thus far can be found here.
How it began
In 2017, Mercy Chinwo signed a 360-degree recording and management contract with the gospel record company EeZee Conceptz, which has managed Minister GUC and Judikay. With singles like “Excess Love,” “Chinedum,” and “Na You Dey Reign,” she rose to fame under the label.
However, she decided not to extend her contract when it expired in 2022.
The financial dispute
EeZee Tee was detained by the EFCC on January 16, 2025, on suspicion of being involved in a $345,000 diversion fraud case. The story’s specifics were unclear at the time. But upon his release, he said that while in EFCC detention, he was compelled to send $274,000. His accounts have been frozen, he said. He claimed that he made the transfer in order for the EFCC to free him after they had detained him for nine days against his will.
Additionally, he acknowledged that he did not pay Chinwo’s royalties to DSPs, but he justified this by claiming that she “boycotted” the label, played at events without telling them, and neglected to send in the money while she was still signed to EeZee Conceptz. However, he claimed to have previously given her more than $600,000 in DSP royalties.
In accordance with their agreement, he further asserted that she still owed EeZee Conceptz one album and a few singles.
The reply from Mercy Chinwo
Chinwo has refuted any misconduct. She accused him of not paying her royalties from 2022 to 2024 in a video that she uploaded on Instagram on Tuesday, January 28. She made no mention of working behind the back of her management. Additionally, she made no mention of the $274,000 that EeZee Tee claimed to have transferred to her account.
She claimed, however, that he obstructed her collaborations, including a feature with Nathaniel Bassey (with whom she later collaborated on “Tobechukwu”), and established a hostile work environment. She said that he had “threatened” and “bullied” her. She also cited a performance in the Edo church of Bishop Felix Omobude as proof of this. She claimed that although Eezee Tee didn’t want her to perform at the event, she persisted in going nonetheless. When she was picked up from the airport with medical personnel on the ground, she claimed that he astonished him by telling the Bishop that she had a terminal disease.
Additionally, she claimed that he has been circulating rumors regarding her personal life, including her child’s paternity. She mostly accused him of changing the signing date from 2017 to 2019 in her original contract. Chinwo claims that after she claimed to have left the label and asked for a copy of the contract, she learned that the one she had first signed in 2017 had been changed to indicate a signing date in 2019.
Eezee Tee’s answer
Eezee Tee called all of her accusations “false” and refuted them in a letter he shared online. The claim that he changed the contract, he said, was a “lie from the pit of hell.” He stated Chinwo changed her mind as an excuse to skip a label mate’s birthday, but she still chose not to go to the celebration at the Bishop’s church.
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