The Nigerian who wrote a song for The Beatles

Many years ago,a Nigerian artiste laid a complaint to an editor of sun that he wrote the song, "obla-di-obla-da...life goes on" for the Beatles but he was ripped off, meaning he was never given any credit for the song.

When we goggled up some few archives, the name Jimmy Scott-Emuakpor came up, he was a friend or an acquaintance of Paul McCartney who is credited to have given the phrase "ob-la-di, ob-la-da....life goes on" to the beatles.

In one interview, Paul McCartney confessed: "A fella who used to hang around the clubs used to say in Jamaican accent "ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on". McCartney admitted picking the phrase from him and turning it around into an internal song. The tag line "ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra" was an expression used by Nigerian whom is a conga player. He later tried to claim a writer's credit for the use of his catch phrase in the song; McCartney claimed that the phrase was "just an  expression". Scott argued it was not a general expression, but merely an expression that was exclusively used in the Scott-Emuakpor family. Scott agreed to drop the case when McCartney agreed to pay Scott's legal expenses for an unrelated issue.

Here's what McCartney latter said in an interview about the whole story

"I had a friend called Jimmy Scott who was a Nigerian conga player, who I used to meet in the clubs in London. He had a few expressions, one of which was, ‘Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, bra’. I used to love this expression… He sounded like a philosopher to me. He was a great guy anyway and I said to him, ‘I really like that expression and I’m thinking of using it,’ and I sent him a cheque in recognition of that fact later because even though I had written the whole song and he didn’t help me, it was his expression.
It’s a very me song, in as much as it’s a fantasy about a couple of people who don’t really exist, Desmond and Molly. I’m keen on names too. Desmond is a very Caribbean name."