COSON FILES NOTICE OF APPEAL ON SAIDU’S JUDGEMENT

Lawyers to Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), G.O. Sodipo& Co, have today filed an immediate Notice of Appeal and Motion for Stay of Execution at the Federal High Court, Lagoswith respect to the judgment of Hon Justice Saliu Saidu delivered today which raised issues onthe name of the society.

COSON wishes to assure all its members, affiliates, licensees, reciprocal representation partners and the general public that there is no judgment anywhere saying that COSON is dead or has ceased to exist. The general public is aware of the gang-up to destroy COSON for no other reason than that COSON has been phenomenally successful. Nothing the adversaries have done has stopped COSON from standing tall. Anyone who thinks that events today will stop COSON is daydreaming. Indeed, COSON is working!

With all due respect to the learned judge, we vehemently disagree with his decision, for very good reasons. We have asked our lawyers to forcefully appeal the judge’s decision up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.By filing the processes in court today without any delay, the lawyers have shown that they are equal to the task.Like most people know, the beauty of the judicial system in a democracy is that no decision is final until the Supreme Court has spoken. We have 100% confidence that the name COSON, will continue to shine bright across the Nigerian nation and across the world for many years to come.

Chief Tony Okoroji

Chairman, Copyright Society of Nigeria Ltd/Gte (COSON)

March 25, 2020

COSON LAWYER SAYS THAT PRETTY OKAFOR’S PUBLIC STATEMENTS AGAINST COSON ARE BASED ON BLATANT FALSEDHOOD, COMPLETE FABRICATION, INCURABLE DESIRE TO BE RELEVANT,BURNING ENVY AND MALICE OF THE WORST KIND.

Renowned lawyer to Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), Mr. James Ononiwu of the Lagos based Whitedove Solicitors, has saidthat the recent statements by self-styled factional President of PMAN, Mr. Pretty Okafor, with questionable followership and questionable address,in which Okafor has attacked COSON, are based on blatant falsehood, complete fabrication, incurable desire to be relevant, burning envy and malice of the worst kindand that the statements are defamatory in every sense and deserve to be fully confronted.

Mr. Ononiwu has given Mr. Okafor two weeks to publish an unreserved public apology to the members of COSON or face the kind of legal action that he will not forget for the rest of his life.

According to Mr. Ononiwu, “It is a fact that at no time did KPMG or any other auditing firm inspect the books of COSON or do any kind of audit of COSON and discover that COSON collected over N1.1 Billion in royalty and licensing fees from users in 2017 and distributed only N225 million to right holders as claimed by Okafor. We openly challenge the cantankerous Pretty Okafor to state when the said audit took place and name the officers who represented KPMG in the said audit which could have only taken place in the warped mind of Mr. Okafor. This is outright fabrication and a figment of the imagination of a sick man. The statements are very inciting and aimed at destroying the great respect and reputation that COSON has earned among decent people”.

Said Mr. Ononiwu, “We are not unaware that as a result of the bold actions recently taken by COSON to defend the integrity of the Nigerian creative industry, all kinds of charlatans and spent forces are being hired to manufacture dirt to rubbish COSON, a first class organization which is respected across the continent. They want to attack COSON to distract attention from their shameful activities. They will fail because COSON has nothing to hide.

“We wish to state emphatically that without the prompting of anyone, COSON has had its accounts audited every single year since its establishment,by auditors appointed by its Annual General Meetings as required by law. The audited accounts have been reviewed and approved openly by the COSON AGM in the presence of a cross section of the Nigerian media every year because COSON has nothing to hide. Each Annual Return has been filed with the Corporate Affairs Commission as required by law.Without any question, COSON has been by far the most transparent and accountable organization in the history of the Nigerian creative industry”.

Saying that Pretty Okafor cannot show anything of value he has done for the musicians of Nigeria and is consumed by his envy of the towering and very glittering  achievements of COSON, Mr. Ononiwu asked “where are the audited accounts of Pretty Okafor’sramshackle PMAN which shamelessly operates from no fixed address? Who audited the Okafor PMAN books? When were they filed with the Registrar of Trade Unions? When did the Registrar approve the returns? Indeed, how many people are parading themselves as PMAN President in Nigeria?”

Said Mr. Ononiwu, “Pretty Okafor may in the past have escaped with talking without discipline and self-control and not facing any consequences. This time, this meddlesome interloper who is not even a member of COSON and has no worthwhile repertoire assigned to COSON will be told that Nigeria is a nation of laws and he will be made to pay heavily for his outrageous behavior”

FOR COSON.

Weighty Allegations: Pressure Mounts on NCC DG, John Asein to Resign (Culled from www.beats-onit.com)

The Director-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), John Asein, may have come under pressure to leave the commission, fillers from the Federal Secretariat Complex, Abuja have revealed.

Asein who was appointed about 15 months ago is immersed in allegations of serial corruption and blatant abuse of public service rules.

www.beats-onit.com had earlier exclusively reported that a civil society and anti-corruption group, Peace & Development for Africa Initiative (PDAI) had issued the Director-General an ultimatum to resign his position or face prosecution. We have it on good authority that the group has made good its threat by filing an action at the Federal High Court Abuja against Mr. Asein.

The DG, www.beats-onit.com gathered, is spending days and nights responding to a deluge of queries from different branches of government. Our sources revealed that Mr. Asein might have received a set of queries from the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC). The latest shoe to drop on him is the panel said to have been set up by the Federal Ministry of Justice to investigate his activities.

Worried by the leakages at the NCC which may have resulted in his dirty linens being washed in public, Mr. Asein who no longer trusts any of his colleagues, resorted to the unilateral mass postings of his Directors and staff in different directions without any consultation or approval of the Governing Board of the commission.

Among those said to have been reassigned are Mr. Obi Ezeilo and Mr. Mike Akpan previously considered Asein’s henchmen. Ezeilo has been moved from his position as Director of Prosecution to Director of Enforcement where he has to wrestle everyday with pirates. Akpan has, more or less, been posted to ‘Siberia’. His new position as Director of the Copyright Institute located somewhere in Garki Abuja is seen as a stepping-stone to retirement.

www.beats-onit.com learnt that both men are unhappy with Asein for what they consider his betrayal. Among those affected in the unexpected postings are Mr. Ogbonna who has become Director of Prosecution and Mr. Augustin Amodu, who has been appointed Director of the Regulatory Department.

The allegations against Mr. John Asein include that after he retired from the Federal Civil Service as a Director on December 31, 2015, he for months, “illegally, unlawfully and fraudulently” continued to draw unearned salaries as if he was still a public officer.

Another of the many allegations is that at the same time that Mr. John Asien has been in his current position of Director-General of the NCC, he had maintained another position as Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Reprographic Rights Society of Nigeria (REPRONIG), remaining the sole signatory of the bank accounts of REPRONIG, a copyright collective management organization regulated by the NCC from which he has been signing out donor money in significant amounts. Mr. Asein is accused of being at the same time the Chief Executive Officer of both the regulatory agency and the regulated organization, a case of conflict of interest.

The DG is also immersed in a scandal over how a sum of over N100 Million was said to have been spent on the recently held 30th Anniversary celebration of the NCC. There is also another brewing controversy over a contract signed by Mr. Asein with the French donor agency, AFD and a Lagos based firm of solicitors in respect of millions of Naira said to be for the study of the operations of copyright collective management organizations in Nigeria.

At the same time that John Ohireime Asein is a Public Servant, it was further alleged, he is also a Director of a private company known as Books & Gavel Ltd which is at odds with Article 030424 of the Public Service Rules. Asein may also have asset declaration issues.

In the past one week, Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) hit the NCC led by Mr. Asein with a 10 billion Naira lawsuit accusing the NCC of having become “a monster, deploying wide powers it has unlawfully assumed to decimate the stakeholders it was set up to protect and in its actions, the commission has become the law maker, the accuser, the judge and the jury in its own case”.

Before the suit was filed, COSON had addressed a major press conference at which it claimed that “Mr. John Asein was tainted and under his leadership, the Nigerian Copyright Commission no longer served the national interest but the private interest of Mr. Asein and his cronies”.

The CMO which has thousands of members across the nation said “COSON on this 10th day of March 2020 demands that Mr. John Asein should immediately resign his position as Director-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission as it is impossible for him to offer any meaningful leadership to the commission going forward.

“If Mr. John Asein does not resign, COSON calls on the Head of Service of the Federation, Mrs. Folashade Yemi Esan, .the Chairman, ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, the Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami; Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay, to ensure that Mr. Asein is suspended from office, properly investigated and prosecuted so that President Buhari’s anti-corruption stand is not seen by the world as a joke”.

COSON concluded its demand by stating that “if these Nigerians fail to take the action which is their duty to take, COSON has lawyers who are ready to obtain the necessary fiat to forcefully prosecute Mr. Asein”.

At the NCC, there is little or no work going on anymore as the fate of the DG is being discussed every minute by the staff of the commission.

On the new developments, a senior official at the NCC told our reporter, “the DG has to be Hercules or Charles Atlas to survive the array of arrows pointed at him. He is neither Hercules nor Charles Atlas!”

COSON SLAMS 10 BILLION NAIRA LAWSUITON NIGERIAN COPYRIGHT COMMISSION (NCC)

Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), the nation’s biggest copyright collective management organization, has gone to the Federal High Court to seek damages of eight billion naira from the Nigerian Copyright Commission(NCC)for “the undemocratic, unlawful and unconstitutional ‘suspension’ of the approval and operating licence of the Plaintiff” and another two billion naira “for the significant loss of Reputation and Goodwill suffered by the Plaintiff and arising from the massive publicity sustained by the NCC against COSON following the undemocratic, unlawful and unconstitutional ‘suspension’ of the approval and operating licence of the Plaintiff and the unlawful directive that the bank accounts of the Plaintiff be frozen.”

In its 63 paragraph Statement of Claimin suit No FHC/L/CS/425/2020filed by renowned Lagos lawyer, Mr. James Ononiwu of Whitedove Solicitors, COSON pleads that It is a fact that the Copyright Act in Section 39 (2) gives the Defendant the power to approve collecting societies but nowhere under the law is the NCC given the power to suspend, revoke or in any way restrict the approval given to a collecting society or embark on an audit of a collecting society or direct the freeze/restriction of the bank accounts of a collecting society without an order of court.

COSON which is Africa’s fastest growing CMO with thousands of members across Nigeria,also pleads that while the Copyright Collective Management Organization Regulations (2007), made by the NCC, states that it has been made in exercise of the powers conferred on the NCC by section 39 (7) of the Copyright Act, the regulations are over reaching of the law because nowhere in Section 39 of the Copyright Act or any other law is the commission given the power to suspend, revoke or in any way restrict the approval given to a collecting society or embark on an audit of a collecting society or direct the freeze/restriction of the bank accounts of a collecting society without an order of court.

COSON said that the NCC has become a MONSTER, deploying the wide powers it has unlawfully assumed to decimate the stakeholders it was set up to protect and that in its actions, the commission has been the law maker, the accuser, the judge and the jury in its own case without COSON being offered any opportunity for fair hearing.

COSON has therefore asked the Federal high Court to declare that the provisions in the Copyright (Collective Management Organizations) Regulations 2007,made by the NCC, by which the NCC has assumed the power to unilaterally suspend or revoke the licence of an approved Collecting Society or to require an approved collecting society to apply to the NCC to renew its licence areundemocratic, unlawful, unconstitutional, null and void.

Similarly, COSON which has reciprocal representation agreements with about 150 collective management organizations in every continent around the world has  asked the Federal High Court to declare that the provision in the Copyright (Collective Management Organizations) Regulations 2007 by which the NCC has assumed the power to order the audit of a Copyright Collective Management Organization without the authorization of the society’s Annual General Meeting and without a court order is undemocratic, unlawful, unconstitutional, null and void. Also requested is a declaration that the directive by the NCC without an order of court that the bank accounts of COSON be frozen, is ultra vires the powers of the NCC, illegal, unlawful, null and void.

Furthermore, COSON is seeking a perpetual injunction restraining the commission, its officers, agents, servants or privies from relying on the provisions of the Copyright Collective Management Organizations Regulations 2007 to take any steps purporting to revoke the operating licence/ approval of COSON or in any way or manner disturbing/continuing to disturb or preventing/continuing to prevent COSON from lawfully enforcing the constitutional rights of its members, affiliates, assignees and reciprocal representation partners or interfering/continuing to interfere with the internal management, operations, funds, audits or bank accounts of the Plaintiff or disturbing/continuing to disturb or preventing/continuing to prevent COSON, its members, affiliates, assignees and reciprocal representation partners from earning income and sustaining themselves with their Intellectual Property, without an order of court.

It will be recalled that at a massively attended world press conference held at COSON House, Ikeja days before the suit was filed, COSON called for the immediate resignation of Mr. John Asein, the Director-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission who is alleged to be immersed in rabid corruption. At the Press Conference addressed by the CMOs chairman, Chief Tony Okoroji, he said, “the Nigerian Copyright Commission has brought shame to the Nigerian nation. We therefore on this 10^th day of March 2020 call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to call the Nigerian Copyright Commission to order. We demand of the Buhari Administration to order the Nigerian Copyright Commission to publish a bold and unreserved apology to the thousands of members of COSON, the entire Nigerian creative community and the international copyright family for the terrible misuse and abuse of power and to make appropriate restitution to COSON”

FOR COSON