America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it is not about ‘picking a pocket or holding up a bank’. It is robbing people of their ideas, inventions, and creative expressions – everything from trade secrets and proprietary products and parts, to movies and music and software. “It’s a growing threat – especially with the rise of digital technologies and Internet file sharing networks. And much of the theft takes place overseas, where laws are often lax and enforcement more difficult… Intellectual property theft costs United States’ businesses billions of dollars a year and robs the nation of jobs and lost tax revenues”, FBI says.
Down here, the Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Mr. Emmanuel Onyeje, said in 2013 that the nation loses N47.5 billion ($300 million) yearly to intellectual property theft. “Intellectual property theft discourages investment into the country. It is one big disincentive to investment in the economy. If there are no laws that protect investment, investors will always lose out. Therefore, if economic development is the fundamental goal of the government, then it must do something about piracy. The government must empower the appropriate agencies to do its works”, Onyeje said.
Last Thursday, April 23, 2015, Nigeria joined the rest of the world to celebrate the 2015 World Book and Copyright day, which had as its theme: ‘Read the World’. It was a christening that took cognizance of the informative importance that books and literature convey about global diverse cultures as key to a truly global village. In 2014, the Nigeria Copyrights Commission (NCC), the body vested with the responsibility of protecting intellectual property in the land, reeled out its achievements to include the launching of an electronic platform (NeCRS) for easy and prompt registration of copyright works from around the globe; and helping to generate a data base of copyright works and right owners.
In pursuit of what it called its policy of zero tolerance to piracy, the Commission said it carried out extensive enforcement operations all over the country culminating in the public burning of 722 million units of pirated copyright works comprising musical, literary, film works and other contrivances with an estimated value of N6.5 billion. The Commission said 235 anti-piracy surveillance operations were carried out in piracy endemic locations across Nigeria; and that 203 strategic anti-piracy operations were carried out against book, software, broadcast, film and music piracy nationwide.
The NCC said 443 suspected pirates were apprehended from the raids, which according to it, led to the removal in circulation of six million and eighty one thousand, three hundred and eightyfour assorted pirated copyright works with an estimated market value of N6.4 billion. In collaboration with the Nigerian Customs Service, NCC said it confiscated 240 by 20 feet containers of infringing DVD’s, VCD’s and books of foreign and local titles from different sea ports across the country; and that it secured 53 criminal convictions against copyright offenders at various federal high courts across the country, with sentences ranging from considerable amounts of fines. The Commission said it also had about 172 ongoing criminal copyright and civil cases pending at various divisions of the Federal High Court, among others.
From the foregoing, therefore, the projection by the Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, Onyeje, that the nation loses N47.5 billion yearly to intellectual property theft cannot be rightly discredited. For piracy, like most critics say, has eaten deep into the fabrics of the Nigerian creative industry. Intellectual property thieves rob the rightful owners of original works to the point that such creative minds end up as frustrated church rats, beginning from their vibrant creative years to the twilight of their lives on earth.
As the world marked the 2015 World Book and Copyright Day, critics in Nigeria, notwithstanding the long list of achievements reeled out by the NCC, insisted that the nation’s intellectual property laws and their enforcement are among the weakest globally. Alaba International Market in Lagos metropolis remains the headquarters of this robbery in the country, followed by Onitsha, in Anambra State, they say. The public impression is that the bandits involved in the trade are still being given kid gloves treatment. The NCC might have put in what it considers its best. But it has to necessarily do more. Like Bob Kruger, Vice President of Enforcement for the Business Software Alliance (BSA), United States, once painted the crime: “Piracy is escalating – not only in the US, but across the globe.
