Mayo Ayilaran is the Director-General of Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN), one of the internationally acclaimed copyright administrators in Nigeria.

In this interview with Emma Chukwuanukwu, ASSISTANT EDITOR, he spoke on the problems besetting copyright administration in Nigeria and proffers the way forward. Excerpts:

What is the current position of copyright administration in Nigeria?

Everybody connected with copyright is struggling to realise the benefit of his or her intellectual labour. That is the benefit inherent in copyrights both at the individual and group levels. For example, in our own organisation, we are doing all we can to make sure that those who are using our works, either playing them live or performing them by mechanical means or reproducing them, pay us for such usage. So, it has been difficult, many are complying while many are not. We have taken many to court and many have been settled out of court. So, it is a continuous exercise, until we have a tolerable level of compliance. By and large, it has not been too easy. It has been challenging but at the same time we feel happy that we have step up the decision.

How much support have the artistes themselves given to your organisation?

The artistes are behind us solidly. I can say they have given us more than 90 percent support if not 100 percent. They trust in us, believe in us that we can deliver and we have been delivering. And that is what you can even see from the current edition of our own in- house bulletin, the Copyright Owner. Members have been commending us and so on. And one of the tests of member's trust in an organisation is their staying ability. That, in spite of everything, none of them has resigned or withdrawn its membership is a good measurement of their support that no matter what, they are with you. So, that support has been there, very solid.

Talking about the legal aspect of it, you said you have been going to court and then government involvement, how would you describe government involvement in terms of regulation, rightly or wrongly?

When we are talking of government, there are levels of government, but government does not exist in vacuum. There are people who operate those government powers, people who put government intention into action. In our own sector, we have the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) but the good intention of creating NCC is being defeated by certain clique in that commission, who are hell bent on truncating or obstructing the smooth administration of copyright in this country. It may not necessarily be the Director-General but officers below him, who have been there since 1989 when the agency was established. They saw copyright as a gold mine which they themselves want to feed upon. So, from one administration to the other, they have continued to constitute a clog in the wheel of copyright administration. One, they will not want to recognise the ownership or the control by the private sector. Copyright is a private sector thing and it is owned by private individuals. The law allows the private individuals to come together. If people can come together to run a company where shares are bought and sold, then why should people not come together to administer their copyright, what they have created individually? So, these individuals within those organisations, especially NCC, are not helping matters. They are not, that is why every time, when we have reasons to talk on the issues of government involvement in copyright, we have always asked the authorities, both the Attorney General of Federation (AGF) and the National Assembly to call all the stakeholders to give account, bring out what the problem is. This is an industry that should be rolling in billions and trillions of naira.

That is why we continue to call on government to look into it. It may not necessarily be the DG because when people come with falsehood and present it before the DG, he will ask them to go and investigate but when they leave his presence, they will go and do a different thing entirely. It is like when you are blaming the president of the federation, of course the buck stops on his table, he should be able to be on top of what his officers do, but most often these officials misbehave. They introduce their own policies.

Given the scenario you have just painted, you are an internationally acclaimed copyright administrator. What is supposed to be the role of government in copyright administration, both locally and internationally?

Number one, the government needs to create that enabling environment for all copyright owners, be they individual or group, to be able to effectively defend and administer their copyright. They should be able to create a level playing ground; serve as barter to the copyright owner in the enjoyment of his copyright and not to be a kind of obstacle to that enjoyment. So that is a problem. The role of government is, if I, as a copyright owner, has an issue with a radio station which has been playing my music without paying me royalty, the role of the government, when I complain, is to back me up to collect my claim effectively from that radio station. But they are not doing that. Rather, they would say that they do not recognise me as a collecting society.

Which is not the intention of the law when they created the NCC. If I go to them and complain that somebody is pirating my work, if I don't have money, for example, to engage a lawyer to go to court and obtain the necessary order, NCC should be able to provide me with a lawyer or the funding to go to court, get the appropriate court order and facilitate police protection for me to go and enforce that order. That is the role the NCC should be playing.

NCC is not a law court but what they have been doing over the years is that they have constituted themselves to be a court of law, where by they go to somebody's private premises, raid the place and claim they have raided pirated materials. And when they do this, they come back and start burning whatever they said they have raided, without having concluded any litigation or any case. If you have gone ahead to destroy the evidence of your case, how do you now successfully prosecute? So the implication of that is that some people may have collected bribe along the line, allow the pirate to go away, destroy the thing and the case dies.

The next time the man gathers another set of money and continues in his piracy. So, that is the biggest hassle that has been there. But if the owner has been there with NCC side by side, we would have raided so many pirates or converted so many of them to do the job legitimately.

From the scenario you just painted, it appears there are no fixed guidelines, either by government or whatever authorities that is supposed to be supervising copyright administration in the country. Should that be the correct thing?

There is law, no doubt about that, which is very clear. There are also guidelines, which they have put in place but they, themselves, don't follow both the law and the guidelines. They are not seeing copyright from the angle of private property.

They are looking at it as if it is part of social public property; it is not. So, these are the things that we are contending with in relation to the government agencies. They don't know the appropriate job they should be doing. There should be an agency to facilitate effective administration of copyright, effective enjoyment of copyright by the copyright owners. But unfortunately they have become a kind of stumbling block to these copyright owners.

From your own experience, should there be more than one copyright management agency in a country like Nigeria?

Yes, why not if not. We are talking of market forces. Let the market forces determine who survives. Look at our banks for instance; we had so many banks before. When so many of the banks were going down and there was no good regulatory environment to make the banks strong, Soludo came, created a level playing ground, set minimum standards and said if you can meet that minimum standard, you can go on. Those who could not meet were merged and those who did not want merger were swallowed up. And now we have about 25 banks, solid banks and they are still licensing more banks. They did not say these 25 are enough. If you come tomorrow and you can meet that minimum standard, CBN will license you to operate. In this case, these people set the rule, we fulfilled the rule, and they said no and went to confirm their own kind of organisation. They wanted only one. We said no.

Even if there should be one, let that one emerge naturally from the market, which of course is positive. They refused. Look at petroleum business, both upstream and downstream; we do not have one refinery in Nigeria. In spite of the fact that we have about four, all the four collapsed at a time. We now have a system where government has licensed more companies to build refineries. So, if all these things are there, why should somebody in his right senses say there should be only one collecting society or copyright management agency in Nigeria? Why should they force you to belong to a particular association when the constitution itself says you have freedom of association? So, ab initio the law of our country from which other laws derived their existence stated clearly that there should be freedom of association. So, for anybody to suggest that one agency should be instituted for copyright management would be in conflict with that constitutional position.

MCSN has been recognised by international copyright organisations. What is the position of these bodies on the wrangling in the copyright industry in Nigeria?

They are fully aware and their position is that as far as the international community is concerned, all their copyrights are vested in MCSN. And they have not changed that position and it will continue to be so.