MUSIC INDUSTRY CRISIS: OKOROJI LOSES OUT AS COSON ACCOUNTS GETS FROZEN - Paul Ukpabio's Blog

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Saturday 15 December 2018

MUSIC INDUSTRY CRISIS: OKOROJI LOSES OUT AS COSON ACCOUNTS GETS FROZEN

TONY OKOROJI

It’s been a while now that the Copyright Society of Nigeria popularly known as COSON, and members who are equally stakeholders in COSON and in the Nigerian Music industry, have been having issues. The matter over time had become very dirty, leading to open fights and struggle.

Well, it seems that The Performing Musician Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN) has stepped in with more muscle as the ‘Release’ below indicates.


COSONS BANK ACCOUNTS NOW FROZEN, UNTIL OKOROJI EXPLAINS HOW HE COLLECTED & USED ENTERTAINERS ROYALTIES

The Performing Musician Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN) will like to inform all its members, and all musical content owners in Nigeria, that in furtherance to the suspension of COSON’s operating license by the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC), all COSON bank accounts have now been frozen.
Working with key corporate members like Premier Music Publishing Company Limited and Ivory Music Limited, we have secured a court order to freeze the accounts in a bid to stop the illegal and unsupervised spending of monies belonging to rights owners by Chief Tony Okoroji and his illegally constituted board.
OKAFOR

This move has become necessary in consideration of the fact that Chief Okoroji has vehemently refused comply with the directives of the industry regulator, NCC and also accede to the demand for full forensic audit of the account and operations of COSON under operations of COSON under his tenure. He has continued to spend the organisation’s funds without prerequisite oversight thereby hurting the earnings due to the right owners.

Furthermore, all owners of musical content in Nigeria are advised to disregard any information being propagated by Chief Tony Okoroji and his cronies on social media that he enjoys the support of the right owners. Virtually all relevant stakeholders in the music industry including top artistes, publishers and record labels with active music catalogs are aligned in support of the NCC’s suspension of COSON’s operating license and with PMAN, Premier Music and Ivory Music in the freezing all its bank accounts.

The PMAN President, Pretty Okafor who is also a COSON member appeals to all musicians to stay calm and be reassured that the Union is doing all it can to end the current fracas in the collective management space. The PMAN President emphasized that the only way to guarantee effective copyright administration practice in Nigeria is putting in place proper operational policied and legislative structures to ensure accountability and sustainable growth.

Pretty Okafor
PMAN president



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