Copyright collective administration: Musicians seek Jonathan, Tambuwal’s help to end monopoly

Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, to assist them in securing  immediate liberalization of copyright collective administration in Nigeria.Speaking with journalists in Lagos, the Chairman, PMAN Care Taker Committee, Kevin Luciano Gabriel said the monopoly in the copyright collection is killing entertainment business in Nigeria.“The forced monopoly in the copyright administrative system in Nigeria is killing entertainment business […]

Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, to assist them in securing  immediate liberalization of copyright collective administration in Nigeria.
Speaking with journalists in Lagos, the Chairman, PMAN Care Taker Committee, Kevin Luciano Gabriel said the monopoly in the copyright collection is killing entertainment business in Nigeria.
“The forced monopoly in the copyright administrative system in Nigeria is killing entertainment business even more than piracy. We have demanded for audience but PMAN has not received any response or action on its requests from NCC,” Gabriel said.
According to the Caretaker chairman, PMAN had written two separate letters to the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) and the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN) on the issue but had received no response.
“In August 2010, a group of entertainment practitioners, under the aegis of Concerned Copyright & Intellectual Property Owners (CCIPO), protested against the imposed monopoly and the Honourable Attorney General promised to reverse the situation within two weeks. Four years on, the problem is still there and this is unacceptable,” Gabriel said.
He also recalled that in May 2013, PMAN, alongside other stakeholders, participated in the Investigative Public Hearing organized by the House of Representatives Committees on Justice and Judiciary, and the committee presented its report and recommendations to the plenary session of the House of Representatives on December, 18, 2013, after it fully adopted the report and its recommendations and passed far-reaching resolutions directing the NCC to immediately end the monopoly.
Gabriel disclosed that one of the resolutions was that the NCC should approve MCSN as a collecting society immediately and described the continued refusal to register MCSN as casting NCC as being compromised and pursuing the interests of a particular section of the industry among others.
“More than nine months after, the NCC has done nothing to carry out the directives of the National Assembly and this is tragic,” he said.
Gabriel further noted that there are two subsisting court judgments against NCC in its application of its regulatory powers against MCSN and that there has been no court ruling upstaging  the execution of the judgments till date, but the NCC has refused to obey the judgments.
“PMAN is equally not aware of any court judgment where the operations or existence of MCSN was declared illegal or unconstitutional; rather the opposite has remained the case. Now we are faced with a regulatory agency which is acting with absolute impunity in order to protect the vested interests of a cabal. Perhaps the situation would have been far more different today if the National Assembly had recommended that the leadership of the NCC be investigated by anti-corruption bodies,” Gabriel said.