Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha 

About 70 per cent of film and music producers and marketers have been thown out of business in Onitsha, Anambra state.

 Daily Sun was told that the activities of pirates, the bane of the creative industry in the country; who through the use of MP3, MP4 and computer downloads of their products, made the once popular and burgeoning Onitsha film and music market, a ghost place.

 They accused the regulatory agencies particularly the Nigeria Copyrights Commission (NCC) of abandoning them to their fate despite repeated pleas.

 National President of the Association of Music and Film Producers and Marketers of Nigeria (AMUFPAN), Evangelist Macson Nwasike lamented that their business was on the verge of total collapse unless government intervened immediately by curtailing the nefarious activities of the pirates. He even asked government to possibly ban the use of MP3 and MP4 in the country.

 He also called on the major stakeholders, such as the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN), Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) and Music Recording Label Owners of Nigeria (MORAN) to form a common front to fight the virus militating against the growth of the industry in the country.

 Nwasike said: “Piracy is the cankerworm that is eating deep in our business, the MP3 and MP4, and also those on the streets with laptops downloading music for individuals and charge them based on the number of music they download, they are eating where they didn’t sow.

 “If you look around in the electronics market in Onitsha, a lot of people have closed their shops; some have gone home to start farming while others joined other businesses. Those who are still in the business are very few; waiting and hoping that tomorrow would be better. We want government to assist us especially in the area of piracy, laptop download and music transfer. Government should call all the unions together whenever they want to support the unions; rather than give some persons money that will never get to the others, for effective result”.

 He suggested to the government to instead set up task force involving their members who would apprehend culprits and handover to the NCC or police for prosecution.

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 “The problem is whenever NCC is going for arrest or raids they will go to police and army to get armed personnel to accompany them which will incur cost. Government should set up powerful machinery outside the copyright commission such as a taskforce that is operational where our members would be incorporated.

 “The NCC would be there to prosecute culprits while the taskforce apprehends the offenders and handover to NCC to prosecute,” Nwasike advised.

 In the same manner, Chairman of the association’s Board of Trustees, Chief Ubaoha Uzoma noted that Nigerian music has taken over the international market but regretted that those behind it have nothing to show for it.

 The western world, he said, created MP3 and MP4 to store and preserve documents but the criminals now use it to steal the intellectual property of Nigerians for their own gains, leaving the owners of the copyright wretched.

 “70 per cent of Nigerians in the sector have been rendered unemployed due to the problem. You can bear me witness when they were renting films in Nigeria; we had up to 35 million shops. It all stopped because people now watch cable television. They have killed the business in Nigeria while their counterparts in other countries are making billions and we kept quiet and our youths are roaming the streets without job”.

 “If President Muhammadu Buhari is really fighting corruption, Government should ban MP3, MP4. He should help us and the society because there is a lot of corruption in this industry,” he said.

 A music marketer and member of the association in Onistha Electronics market, Damian Ogudike urged the copyright commission to be awake to its responsibility by arresting and prosecuting those he called “joy killers”.

 He said introduction of price control after addressing the issue of piracy would make the sector boom again.