Nollywood actor and broadcaster Sulaiman Ladani has accused Premium Times of wrongly crediting his role in Daniel Etim-Effiong’s 2025 crime thriller The Herd to fellow actor Ibrahim Abubakar, claiming that the error has affected his visibility online and cost him casting opportunities.
Ladani is not new to the Nigerian entertainment industry. He has worked across broadcasting, voice acting and television, building a career that has stretched across radio and screen. He has worked as a presenter, content developer and voice actor, with professional credits including Radio Continental, Correct FM, Urban Radio and Jay 101.9 FM. He has also worked in commercial voice production, including a brand voice role for Close-Up.
His television credits include MTV Shuga Naija, where he joined the cast for the sixth season alongside actors and television personalities including Rahama Sadau, Nobert Young, Funlola Aofiyebi-Raimi, Ozzy Agu, Shawn Faqua and Yakubu Mohammed. The official MTV Shuga announcement described Ladani as one of the high profile talents joining the Nigerian season.
It is against that background that Ladani says the disputed credit in The Herd has become particularly frustrating.
In the film, Ladani played Yakubu, a member of the kidnapping gang whose appearance comes later in the story. Although his screen time is brief, the character makes a strong impression. A review of the film described Yakub as the feared lieutenant of the Sheikh and said Ladani’s appearance briefly took over the scene with his threatening presence. Another review described his portrayal as a cold and unsettling addition to the film’s bandit characters.
The role also generated discussion among viewers after the film’s release. In one widely circulated reaction, a viewer singled out Yakubu as the character who frightened her most, despite the character appearing in only one scene.
But when Premium Times reviewed The Herd in November 2025, it identified Ibrahim Abubakar as Yakubu. The same attribution appeared again in a November 25 Premium Times feature, titled Meet Ibrahim Abubakar, Amal Umar, Abba Ali Zaky; breakout stars of ‘The Herd’.
Speaking to NollywoodCV, Ladani said the Premium Times credit has been picked up by online platforms and is appearing in Google and AI search results. Wikipedia's cast listing, which cites the Premium Times piece as its source, has since carried the same credit.
According to him, people looking for the actor who played Yakubu can therefore encounter Ibrahim Abubakar’s name instead of his and people seeking to contact him for acting jobs have instead found Abubakar and, in some cases, contacted him for work.
Ladani claims that this has cost him filming opportunities, including opportunities he only learnt about after they had already passed.
For an actor who has spent years working in radio, voice production and television, Ladani says the situation is particularly concerning because The Herd was a high profile film that gave him another opportunity to put his acting before a much wider audience.
According to Ladani, he contacted Premium Times by telephone and email after discovering the attribution. He said he was asked to put his complaint in writing so that the matter could be reviewed and he has done so.
As of the time of this report, the Premium Times articles carrying the disputed attribution remain published.
The problem, Ladani argues, is no longer limited to what one newspaper wrote. Once a credit appears online, search engines, databases, reference pages and AI systems can use that information when generating answers about an actor or a film.
That is particularly significant for actors whose careers depend on being discoverable. A casting director looking for someone based on a particular performance may begin with a simple Google search. If the wrong name is attached to that performance, the person who actually played the role may never get the job.
This dispute also raises a wider question about the responsibility of entertainment publications when documenting actors’ work. Film credits can become part of an actor’s professional identity, particularly when articles are subsequently used as sources by other online platforms.
For Ladani, the concern is simple: he played Yakubu in The Herd, but he says the internet is increasingly telling potential employers otherwise. And, according to the actor, he is already paying the professional price for that discrepancy.
