Hello everyone,
As we mark “No Music Day†this September 1, 2020, we wish to remind everyone that “No Music Day†is a day that the music industry in Nigeria dedicates annually to bring the attention of the Nigerian nation to the widespread infringement of the rights of song writers, composers, performers, music publishers, record labels and other stakeholders in the nation’s music industry.
As we have done every year in the past 11 years, COSON on behalf of the Nigerian Music Industry Coalition, has once again requested broadcasting stations in the country to devote a substantial amount of broadcast time today to programs which highlight the significant abuse of the rights of creative people in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. This is to show solidarity with the Nigerian creative community ravaged by piracy and other forms of rights infringement.
We have also requested Nigerian newspapers, magazines and Social Media blogs to publish special features on issues bordering on the infringement of Intellectual Property rights today and in the following days.
As “No Music Day†is marked across the country this September 1, COSON has also asked our thousands of members all over Nigeria and other stakeholders in the music industry to engage with the public through the mass media and by vigorous deployment of our immense social media handles to register our disdain for the widespread contempt for the rights of creative people in Nigeria.
Lest we forget, “No Music Day†is traceable to that historic week in 2009 when Nigerian artistes of different shades embarked on a weeklong hunger strike staged in front of the National Theatre in Lagos. The hunger strike which was a result of our frustration with the devastating level of intellectual property theft in our country was the prelude to what has become known as “No Music Day†in Nigeria. The day was September 1, 2009 when as practitioners in the Nigerian music industry, we asked the over 400 licensed broadcast stations in the country not to broadcast music for a significant period of the day.
For the first time in human history, on September 1, 2009, the music industry in a nation called for the halt of the broadcast of music on all channels for an entire day. This action captured the imagination of the world and what is marked as “No Music Day†every year in Nigeria, was born.
Due to the huge attention garnered by “No Music Day†held annually in Nigeria, plans are underway to make “No Music Day†a Pan African event.
Unfortunately, the disease which necessitated the hunger strike of 2009 has not quite been cured. At this time that other nations are building their economic growth on the creative and knowledge economy, Nigeria must take important steps to protect its creative industries to ensure the socio-economic progress of the nation.
On this “No Music Dayâ€, we wish to underline the fact that at a time of dwindling revenue, when we seek to improve the socio-economic conditions of our people, Nigeria can no longer continue to pay lip service to the protection of the labour of our creative talents.
On “No Music Day†2020, all flags at COSON House are flying at half-mast, representatives and supporters of the music industry have fanned out to different broadcast stations for discussions and interviews as this official statement on the state of the Nigerian music industry is being released from COSON House.
As we mark “No Music Day†today, we must ask all Nigerians to seriously think about a world without music. What kind of world would that be?
Every year, in marking “No Music Dayâ€, our key objective has been to engage the Nigerian people and the various governments on the potential contributions of Nigerian creativity to the development of the Nigerian nation and the necessity to fully deploy the substantial comparative advantage which our nation possesses in this area so as to provide hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs to the teeming masses of Nigerian youth who parade the streets of our country almost hopelessly and which hopelessness invariably attracts them to become laborers in the devil’s workshop.
Everywhere you go, the ingenuity of the Nigerian people continues to be on display. Our music, movies, literature, fashion, programming, and similar products of the creative endeavour are in substantial demand across the world. In the creative industry, Nigeria has significant comparative advantage. We are only asking for people who have the vision, the passion and the understanding of the new world to be in the right positions to spark the fire and change the national narrative.
As we mark “No Music Day†2020, we ask for an end to the period of the locust in Nigeria when poor leadership without vision has held our country down.
Our theme for the 2020 “No Music Day†is: “A MUSIC INDUSTRY CHALLENGED BY THE COVID 19 PANDEMICâ€
One of the big lessons of the Coronavirus pandemic is that our nation’s almost total dependence on oil revenue is very dangerous. For several months, nobody wanted to buy our oil because nobody needed it. At some point we were almost forced to pay people to take our oil because of storage challenges. The situation may have eased a little, but with the huge development in alternative energy programs, the problem hovers over us.
While the pandemic has hit practically everyone badly, it has been devastating for musicians in Nigeria. With all event venues shut down, event centres, hotels and nightclubs closed, no birthdays, no weddings, no product launches, no concerts, not even funerals allowed, the income of thousands of our musicians has been crushed.
It is as a result of this devastating situation that during the lock down, the COSON Board took the bull by the horn and earmarked the sum of N72 million naira of COSON money for distribution to musicians across Nigeria to cushion the crushing effects of the pandemic. The great lesson is that there was no quarrel whatsoever about the distribution of the money because it was done transparently. Of course, we could have done a whole lot more if the many obstacles placed in our way by the Nigerian environment were not there.
The fact that this broadcast is being made from the magnificent COSON House in Ikeja built without one naira of government money, no loan, grant or debt whatsoever places on record what the Nigerian creative community can do if no shackles are placed on us.
We have read in the newspapers and heard on broadcast media that the government is interested in providing COVID 19 palliatives for the creative industry. We find it odd that as the one Nigerian organization with the greatest number of creative people and undeniable structure, several months into the COVID 19 lockdown, nobody has reached out to us, nobody has asked us any questions and nobody has provided any palliatives.
For many years, some of us in the creative industries have continuously requested a proper engagement with the government so that we can unleash the burning latent energy of the creative geniuses that abound in our nation and to deploy that energy towards national development. We have repeatedly asked the government to unchain the immense potentials that exist in our nation.
It was for that purpose that we worked towards the setting up of the Nigerian Copyright Commission. We are afraid that rather than be of help to us, the NCC has become an organization that views any differing opinion as an affront and anyone with such an opinion as an enemy who must be hounded and crushed. We call on the government to take necessary steps to ensure that common sense prevails at the NCC and the leadership comes to appreciate that the mission of the commission will never be achieved until it finds common ground with its critical publics and learns to harness the different points of view.
On this “No Music Dayâ€, we must tell the musicians of Nigeria that our problems will not be solved until we stop the bickering and factionalization in our industry which most times are exploited to keep us down. We must work together in the interest of our country and the young people who look towards us for guidance. We must understand that in a democracy, there will be alternative points of view. Each alternative view should not result in the setting up of an alternative faction.
We should no longer tolerate a situation where there are diverse organizations in the industry that upon close observation provide no answers and do nothing for anyone except those who claim to be their leaders.
All true musicians in Nigeria must be terribly embarrassed by the endless finger pointing and dirty name calling that have become the order of the day in PMAN, the once most admired and important national association whose image has been badly damaged and which has been made the laughing stock of the nation. The time has come for the bickering and quarrelling to stop and for those in the industry who truly have the interest of musicians at heart to come together and work with one another to ensure that the industry speaks with one voice on critical issues. We must take to heart the immortal words of the late Dr Martin Luther King Jnr who said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as foolsâ€.
On this “No Music Dayâ€, we ask for real change so that the Nigerian nation can have an environment to address the following:
1) Implement the Private Copy Levy scheme which after many years has still not been implemented.
2) Ensure that necessary steps are taken to finally get the National Endowment Fund for the Arts operative so as to provide urgently needed resources to ensure the funding of creative projects in Nigeria and to ensure the welfare of creative people in our country who have fallen into hard times.
3) Ensure that Government owned broadcasting stations and other government owned institutions are reminded that there is no provision under the law that exempts them from the payment of royalties for the musical content broadcast or deployed by them.
4) Ensure that the Nigerian Copyright Commission and other institutions of government pivot towards the effective implementation of anti-piracy measures in the digital environment which is where the bulk of piracy exists today.
5) Ensure that the National Assembly acts with despatch to guarantee the promulgation into law of the new Copyright Bill which contains several provisions that deal with the infringement of copyright in the digital era.
We believe that the time has come for our music industry to go beyond simply providing entertainment but playing a key role in nation building.
We know that COSON cannot please everyone but we keep working hard and remain committed to lift up the musicians of Nigeria, promote and defend our industry and provide visible solutions to the problems of each of us. We have absolutely no interest in the cantankerous name calling and rabid character assassination which many appear to dwell in and which do not provide even one cup of garri for any Nigerian artiste or one cube of Maggi for his pot of soupâ€.
We cannot afford to give up as a nation despite the immense disappointments we have had. We must reinvent the Nigerian nation and the way we think of creativity. In building a new and better nation, creative people must play a central role, stand up, take responsibility, work together, establish the strong advocacy necessary in every democracy to create positive change.
Finally, as we mark “No Music Dayâ€, we wish to humbly appeal for the pardon of the 22 year old musician in Kano State, Aminu Yahaya Sharif, who was recently sentenced to death for blasphemy. We wish to state that we are an organization representing the interest of musicians and others in the music industry. Our organization is neither religious, political or tribal. We have members from every state in Nigeria belonging to different religions and different political parties and we respect the beliefs of each of them. We make our appeal on completely humanitarian and compassionate grounds and hope that other organizations and individuals will join us in pleading that the life of this young Nigerian is spared.
God bless the Nigerian music industry. God bless Nigeria.
CHIEF TONY OKOROJI:
September 1, 2020
