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COSON Board member, Honourable John Ewelukwa Udegbunam has asked Nigerians and
the international copyright community to discountenance what he has termed a
campaign of falsehood unleashed by the controversial factional leader of PMAN,
Mr. Pretty Okafor, against COSON, Nigeria’s biggest copyright organization. He
has also described the never-ending attempt by Okafor to destroy the name and
integrity of COSON Chairman, Chief Tony Okoroji as deplorable, especially so
soon after Chief Okoroji floored the loquacious Okafor at the Lagos State High
Court in a libel case decided recently by Justice A.A. Oyebanji. Speaking to www.beats-onit.com,
Udegbunam repeated his description of Pretty Okafor as “the entertainment
industry’s blatant Minister of Confusion, Disinformation & Fabrication”.
According
to Udegbunam “Pretty Okafor very well knows that COSON is not proscribed,
delisted or operating illegally yet he continues to trumpet and spread the
falsehood everywhere. The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has in writing
said that It has not delisted and is not delisting COSON which has consistently
met its obligations to the commission, yet Pretty Okafor continues to spread
his falsehood and confusion vigorously. Okafor knows that COSON is the only
organization in Nigeria that is today providing succor to musicians across
Nigeria yet this Minister of Disinformation who poses as PMAN President
desperately wants to kill COSON. The truth is that COSON is working…one hundred
percent working! Anybody who visits the magnificent COSON House in Ikeja today
will find that despite Okafor’s nonsense, all systems and personnel at this
fantastic Nigerian organization are operating efficiently.
Speaking
further to www.beats-onit.com, Hon. Udegbunam said ”It is
the same way that Pretty Okafor trumpets the falsehood that he was not aware of
the case in which Chief Tony Okoroji recently got a resounding judgment against
him. Most people in the music industry will recall that when the case was
filed over two years ago, it was widely publicized on practically every media
platform. Pretty Okafor may have forgotten that he once claimed on Facebook
that he was in court for the case and neither saw Chief Okoroji nor his lawyer
and boasted that Chief Okoroji would never get judgment against him. I was a
witness in the matter and I know that for a while, Pretty Okafor did everything
to evade service until the judge ordered that Pretty Okafor should be served by
pasting. The judge’s order was carried out. I was in court and I saw Pretty
Okafor’s lawyer in court. He announced himself for Okafor before the judge and
participated in the trial and inspected all the exhibits tendered in the case.
How can this Okafor man suddenly claim that he was not aware of the case that
went on in an open court for more than two years? Maybe he thinks that by his
behaviour, he can avoid the consequences of the judgment. I really don’t know
what brand of alcohol Pretty Okafor is drinking. Chief Tony Okoroji has Pretty
Okafor by a corner and I can assure you that he will not escape”
The
vastly respected Udegbunam is the immediate past National President of the
powerful Music Label Owners & Recording Industries Association of Nigeria
(MORAN), Nigeria’s biggest association of owners of copyright in sound
recordings. From inception, he has been a member of the Management Board of
COSON, Nigeria’s most respected and successful copyright collective management
organization. The no nonsense activist is a trained musicologist, composer,
music teacher, producer and label owner and National Music Director of the
Praise & Worship Ministry of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Nigeria
(CCRN).
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