COSON asks FG to stop N1.2bn paid to MCSN for Nigerian creatives

BY ORJI ONYEKWERE

Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), Nigeria’s biggest copyright collective management organization, has called on the Federal Government to immediately dismantle what it calls the “Abubakar Malami Scam Machine” which it says was foisted by the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, on the nation, to siphon money from innocent Nigerian musicians.

At a press briefing held at COSON House Ikeja on Thursday February 19, 2026, COSON gave a very detailed account of the birth and development of the Private Copy Levy scheme from which the sum of -N-1.2 Billion was said to have been recently allocated to Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN) by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) for distribution to copyright owners in the music industry, a development of which has raised tremendous controversy.

Said Chief Tony Okoroji, Chairman of the COSON Board who read the text at the briefing on behalf of COSON: “When on 15th January, 2018, I embarked on a week-long open demonstration in front of the Federal High Court, Lagos, against Mr Abubakar Malami SAN, then Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, debatably, the most powerful man in Nigeria, it was after several meetings with Mr. Malami in his Abuja office. Mr Malami’s words and arguments had left me trembling and scared about the damage such a man, with his dangerous mindset and the enormous power he was wielding, could do to the future of Nigeria and how many years it would take our nation to repair the damage”.

Continuing Chief Okoroji said: “The revelation that the EFCC has allegedly traced properties worth over a whopping N212 billion to Abubakar Malami should make everyone sit up. The pocketing by one man and his family not known to be engaged in any significant manufacturing enterprise, any serious trading business or any special service delivery activity, of this frightening amount of money which is bigger than the budget of some states in Nigeria, is the true reason why millions of Nigerians live in abject poverty and penury and many see very little future for our country and have turned to crime that threatens all of us.

“The humungous amount of money said to have allegedly been traced by the EFCC to Malami may just be a mere fraction of the fortune tucked away by this man who seems to have his hands in every pie including the so-called recovered Abacha loot which is re-looted by deploying fantom legal consultants who pocket multi- million dollars in commissions for purportedly writing agreements which many lawyers at the Federal Ministry of Justice can easily do for nothing. What of the Paris Chub refund brouhaha?”

Revealing the sudden rebirth of MCSN, the former President of PMAN said: “On April 3, 2017, I had just returned to Lagos from attending the 75th birthday ceremonies of Evangelist Ebenezer Obey Fabiyi’s in Abeokuta, when I got a call from a reliable source in Abuja, that  without consulting anyone in the music industry and despite the strong protestation of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, Mr Abubakar Malami was scheming to approve and licensed, the Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN) to collect and distribute royalties on behalf of  Nigerian musicians. MCSN’s controlling mind and alta ego is one Mayowa Ayilaran, who is not a song writer or composer, a music publisher or label owner, with absolutely no investment in the music industry and who has never been elected by the musicians of Nigeria to represent them in any form. An investigation will show that for 36 unbroken years, Mayowa Ayilaran has been the Chief Executive Officer of MCSN.

“At that point, MCSN and its officials were facing 7 different criminal cases before several judges of the Federal High Court. Indeed, an earlier attempt to license MCSN, was publicly nullified by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2005.

“Having manipulated the system for over 25 years, trial was scheduled to commence in April 2017 in each of the seven cases in which Ayilaran and MCSN were defendants. That was indeed the significant reason for the hyperactivity in which the Honourable Minister of Justice quickly ‘approved’ MCSN without due process so as to truncate the criminal cases against Mayowa Ayilaran”

In the words of the COSON Chairman: “Upon Malami’s purported approval of MCSN to license, collect and distribute music copyright royalties, an unrelenting shakedown began to pressure organizations doing business in Nigeria who deploy music in their operations. One of the well-known examples is the Pay TV company, Multichoice, from which the sum of 2.7 billion Naira was given to MCSN. Very few musicians in whose names the billions were obtained, allegedly ever saw one naira of the billions! This scandal of “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” continues to hunt the Nigerian music industry till today. The time has finally come for a proper investigation of who got how much from the Multichoice shake down”.