Michael Chikwudi
TIME was when those who called themselves the ‘generation next musicians’ wanted to call the shorts as the leaders of Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN). Then they wanted to hijack the leadership of the musicians’ union which, gained household popularity in the days of Chief Tony Okoroji, from the then President, Dele Abiodun.
On the platform of industry watchers, they took their case to Oshogbo, Osun State, where incidentally, PMAN was holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM). They enjoyed the full support of Chief Okoroji and canvassed their readiness to take over the leadership of the organisation and perhaps prevent it from polarization as it is now.
And like they say, after the Oshogbo debacle which had all the happening musicians then in attendance, including Mr. Efe Omorogbe, failed woefully, the principal actors and their supporters adorned another thinking caps and in no time stepped into the copyright collecting society crisis that had been brewing between the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) and the then Performing And Mechanical Rights Society (PMRS) which was formed by PMAN in the days of Chief Okoroji as its president with Chief Chris Ajilo as its general manager then and the likes of Neji Okunowo, Laolu Akins, Toju … Chief Ebenezer Obey-Fabiyi, Joel Ajayi, the late Christy Essien-Igbokwe among others were on its board.
Pretending to be searching for peace in the troubled house of copyright collective management in Nigeria, the young musicians organised series of meetings at a hotel in Ikeja with PMRS and MCSN members with a view to forming one strong and virile collective society. They did not stop at that, they took their case to the Nigerian Copyright Commission of Nigeria (NCC), which then had Professor Adebambo Adewopo (SAN) as its director general and convinced it on the need for only one collective society in Nigeria in spite of the fact that countries like America, the UK, South Africa have more than one society till date.
But MCSN led by Mayo Ayilaran played into their hand when it insisted that before the conclusion of the merger talk that will see MCSN and PMRS as one, both societies should be asked to bring its catalogues to the table to know who has what. That was aside the allegation that MCSN refused to summit its audited book for all to see. MCSN in return had stubbornly insisted that it had more recorded works than PMRS and that all foreign repertoires belonged to its foreign affiliate and so cannot be a junior partner in the merger talk, a claim which Okoroji led PMRS members challenged very seriously.
At this point, the merger plan ended in disarray and the young musicians who already harboured sympathy for PMRS fused into it and COSON was born and approved as the sole CMO in music and sound recording by Adewopo led NCC.
For seven years COSON operated without a rival until December 7, 2017, when the current crisis rocking it came to the fore. Though, before then, cracks which led to the exit of the likes of Sunny Neji, Laolu Akins, Toju, Onyeka Onwenu, Banky W, Sammy Okposo among others had been managed.
But Okoroji has refused to be pushed out of office, the way he said he was stampeded out of office as PMAN president. He has gone to court asking to know if NCC has the power to ask him to quit office even after he has been reinstated by a section of members of the society in an emergency meeting chaired by Professor (Sir) Victor Uwaifo.
Just as we ‘siddon and look’ while waiting for the outcome of the court cases and the next move of NCC, MCSN is somewhere oiling its machinery in preparation to resume operation and maybe recoup what the NCC denied it for the seven years its application for licence was turned down for no good reason.
And while observers are also eagerly waiting to see who blinks last, Okoroji or Omorogbe and gang, it is certainly not out of place to say that the tiger the young musicians rode on its back to try to consume Dele Abiodun in Oshogbo years back has turned against them; is the law of karma that is now catching up with them? Only time will tell.
