Mr. Mayo Ayilaran, is the director general of the recently approved Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria(MCSN) that has for seven years plus, denied operating licence by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) to operate as collective management organization (CMO). In this interview with our correspondent,Michael Chikwudi, he spoke on how MCSN weathered the storm for seven good years among others.
I will like to start by congratulating you on the approval of MCSN Licence; though, we have done it before. Meanwhile, we are beginning to be disturbed that even after four months of the approval, you are yet to hit the ground running as expected. What is happening?
Yes, your expectation is quite right. We ought to have hit the ground running but we have some challenges which we are fixing and very soon you will hear from us. But beyond that, you must realize that we were handicapped. We were handicapped not for one year, not for two years, not for five years but for seven years. Yes, for seven good years. We were not allowed to operate. Our application for licence was turned down for no just reason. And during those seven years, our materials, our working tools, our computers, our business secrets were not only carted away by the National Copyright Commission (NCC) but destroyed. However, glory be to God, we have seen some of those documents. They were taken and given to other company, we have seen the evidence; our database was given to the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), which has virtually taken all our members, all our licensees. So, we are now reeducating those people to allow the things of the past to remain in the past but in moving forward, we have to retrieve all our materials that we have traced to COSON. That is were we are now.
Secondly, you will recall that when our licence was approved, COSON went on the offensive, particularly, Chief Tony Okoroji. He did everything in the book to ensure that that licence was revoked. He started from the office of NCC, when he didn’t succeed, he moved over to the office of the attorney general of the federation and the office told him that from what it has seen, it has done justice on the matter because this guys (MCSN people) are also Nigerians and you cannot deny them their right of existence and that furthermore their investigation showed that they owned majority of the rights even before you came into the scene. Again, that the National Assembly (NASS) had investigated this issue, two committees of both houses, judiciary and justice, and conducted public hearing in which everybody participated in and they found out that we were shorted change. The minister told them that he has done what he needed to do. When he left there, he went to the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, tried to cajole that one to write to the president to return the NCC to his ministry. Actually, Lai Mohammed did without actually knowing the fact that the same thing had been done in the past, way back in 2006. When all these failed, he wrote to the presidency. So, the pressure was much that we had to leave everything and defend our licence. So when he now failed totally, he launched a legal action, asking the court to quash the decision of the attorney general and the licence given to us by NCC. He also asked the court to order that the NCC be transferred back to the Ministry of Information and Culture. In all of these we were defendants and we defended it successfully. And at the end of the day, to God be the glory, about a month ago, the court dismissed all the cases. So, we are still rebuilding the blocks and more so, the people we are talking to, are saying ‘we cannot pay you because COSON says you are facing criminal charges; that your licence is fake and so on. You can come back when you finish your case.’ So, now that we have finished the cases successfully, we can now go back to them. So that is the reason it appears as if nothing is happening on our part.
Again it is also not true to say we are not doing anything; things are moving on underneath because we have secured very good judgements by way of monetary judgements; one was against Multichoice, which the court asked to pay us N6billion; in the same period, the Appeal Court ruled that we as owners and assignee of exclusive rights, we are not affected by sections 17 and 39 of the Copyright Act. Which means that all the sufferings we have been made to undergo in seeking licence, in been denied licence were not necessary after all; but we have taken all that as a learning process.
Even before NCC, MSCN has been operating as owner, assignee of exclusive rights. And the law is that if you are the owner, nobody should stop you from enjoying your rights and that has been the argument of MCSN and even under section 39, it is one of the prerequisite for you to become a collective society.
Before now, COSON was the sole copyright collecting society in music and sound recording in Nigeria and might have collected what rightly belonged to you. How are you now going to separate the sheep from the goat?
That is simple because every work has the name of the author, composer and what have you. Just like a house, it has owner, it has deed and it has Certificate of Occupancy. So for every work that we identify, we will look for the owner and if they are traced to MCSN, COSON would have to pay us. As a matter of fact, there is a case in the court against Okoroji and COSON in which we are asking them to account for our money they have collected in the past seven years, having been the sole copyright society in Nigeria. Though, they claimed that we have no locus standi to make such claim because we were not approved then and secondly that it is statue barred. We went and explained to the judge that we are not asking for this right as a collecting society but as the owner. We tendered our deed of assignment. Concerning the issue of statue barred, we showed the court that they are supposed to keep the money for seven years and that they are bound to pay anytime the owner(s) come for it within the seven years and the court agreed with us and threw away their objection. The case is still ongoing and might be another cool money waiting for us. We have proof to show that COSON has collected our money.
Still on CONSON, some of us are surprised that MCSN is not taking advantage of the ongoing crisis in the house of COSON, the way COSON made an issue out of the criminal charges preferred against you and some of your staff recently and also considering the fact that what happens in COSON might affect MCSN. What really is MCSN take on the shenanigan going on in COSON?
Well, MCSN has a tradition of keeping its nose where it concerns it. So, it will be out of place for us to meddle into that their internal matter. What concerns us is that a lot of our money has been collected by Okoroji and COSON and we have approached the court on that. We are talking of accountability and whatever they are talking internally is their business. Beyond that, it will be out of place for us to comment on their crisis. We don’t want to be accused of fueling the crisis.
Correct me if I am wrong, I think that one of the reasons then why your application for licence was turned down was that you refused to submit your books for NCC to see and that your operation was not transparent. Now, this is the same allegation being leveled against Okoroji by some members of his COSON
I like to disagree with you on this question; to us and till date, NCC has not come out to tell us, in black and white, the reason or reasons, why it refused us licence or turned down our application. The nearest they got to telling the world why we were denied approval was at the National Assembly during the public hearing when they told the honorable members that they refused us licence because of national interest. And the chairman of the committee asked them, ‘what do you mean by national interest? Okay, show us where it is within your law’ and they couldn’t show them. Instead they said that most of our repertoire is foreign and that if we collect the money, more than 80% would be sent abroad. They misinterpreted or they twisted our position because what we were saying to them was that of the total foreign works in Nigeria, MCSN owns the right and when you are looking at the entire local works, because we knew that there was PMRS then, at least 80% belongs to MCSN, so mischievously, somebody twisted it to mean that ‘oh, every money MCSN collects would be going to foreigners.’ And a member of the panel then said, ‘even at that, if the foreign people send money to your local people for their works used over there, it behooves on MCSN to also send money to them.’ It was then that they told NCC that they have been compromised that they should go and approve MCSN. There wasn’t anything in the paper stating the reason(s) for our rejection.
Some people are wondering what that this same director general of NCC, ..Ezekudo, that rejected your application then, sees now that he did not see before that made him sign the letter of your rejection then?
No, it was Prof. Adebanbo Adewopo that did not approve us, not Ezekudo. And Adewopo was once our solicitor; he worked for us before he was appointed the DG of NCC. And one of the precedents in copyright in Nigeria, he secured it when he worked for us. What he saw that turned him, they say when people get to office they behave strangely, only him can say. And when Ezekudo came in, we thought that he will do the right thing and we were so lucky that a government that is determined to right the wrong of the past came in. And we said let us resubmit our petition and application like we had been doing every year. We resubmitted our application and backed it up with the resolution of NASS; then luckily for us, our letter did not fall into the hands of those who have been sweeping it under the carpet. We were lucky that our letter went directly to the source. We were invited to defend it and for so several months we did and here we are today with a licence.
How do you think those who are not ready to pay for the right they exploit will react to you arrival on the scene?
Many of them have congratulated us and pledged their support. I can give it to them. But when it comes to payment time, many of them will say we have paid to COSON. But there is no problem about that. Just give us the evidence of your payment. So the question of we don’t know who to pay to can no longer arise because immediately we got our licence, we wrote to COSON telling that we have secured our licence and that we will be willing to know the areas we can collaborate if and whenever you return only for COSON to go on the offensive saying that the licence is fake.
