Akeem Nafiu 
The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) has called on all stakeholders within the creative industry to always engage with it in order to keep it busy. The Director General of the Commission, Mr. John Asein, made the appeal when he received a donation of 20 pieces of HP laptops, an HP colour laser jet printer and a brand new Toyota Hiace bus in support of its operations from the Musical Copyright Society Nigeria Ltd/Gte (MCSN) at its head office in Abuja. The NCC DG, who was delighted with the donation, used the occasion to request the stakeholders in the creative industry to keep the commission busy especially in the area of enforcement of their rights. He said: “For me, this event is a sign of a new dawn, it confirms what we can achieve if we work together to grow the creative industry.
It means that the creative industry in return should be able to grow the nation’s economy. ‘‘Here we are strengthening the capacity of institutions, in this case, the Nigerian Copyright Commission. I will convey this to my own boss, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice that we found one stakeholder again that has come out to support the Commission. “I have always said that the NCC as a regulatory agency is not a task master, it is not one that will breathe down and make the Collective Management Organisations (CMOs), associations or anyone in the creative sector feel anyway alienated. “One thing is, by this gesture, you have fired my colleagues up.
Let me drop this assignment that MCSN, PMAN, AVRS and REPRONIG should help us with. One is, I don’t think we should be seen idle, our officers should not just sit in the offices idle, we want to be on the field regularly, whether it is to clean up the mess of piracy in the fields of music, films, books or broadcasts, we must be seen working every day of the week, if we have to go on surveillance on Sundays, we will do it. Responding, Chief Executive Officer of MCSN, Mr. Mayo Ayilaran, sought the NCC’s intervention in the area of improving corporate governance, accountability and transparency in the creative industry. “We do not think of what our government or nation can do for us, but we should rather be thinking of what we can do for our nation because when our nation is good, we will be good and when our nation is better, we too will be better.
