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!”
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