COSON’s banks accounts now frozen, until Okoroji explains how he collected & used entertainers royalties.
The Performing Musician Employers Association of Nigeria
(PMAN) will like to inform all its members, and all musical content
owners in Nigeria , that in furtherance to the suspension of COSON’s
operating license by the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC), all COSON
bank accounts have now been frozen.
Working with key corporate members like Premier Music
Publishing Company Limited and Ivory Music Limited, we have secured a
court order to freeze the accounts in a bid to stop the illegal and
unsupervised spending of monies belonging to rights owners by Chief Tony
Okoroji and his illegally constituted board.
This move has become necessary in consideration of the
fact that Chief Okoroji has vehemently refused comply with the
directives of the industry regulator, NCC and also accede to the demand
for full forensic audit of the account and operations of COSON under
operations of COSON under his tenure. He has continued to spend the
organisation’s funds without prerequisite oversight thereby hurting the
earnings due to the right owners.
Furthermore, all owners of musical content in Nigeria
are advised to disregard any information being propagated by Chief Tony
Okoroji and his cronies on social media that he enjoys the support of
the right owners. Virtually all relevant stakeholders in the music
industry including top artistes, publishers and record labels with
active music catalogs are aligned in support of the NCC’s suspension of
COSON’s operating license and with PMAN, Premier Music and Ivory Music
in the freezing all its bank accounts.
The PMAN President, Pretty Okafor who is also a COSON
member appeals to all musicians to stay calm and be reassured that the
Union is doing all it can to end the current fracas in the collective
management space. The PMAN President emphasized that the only way to
guarantee effective copyright administration practice in Nigeria is
putting in place proper operational policied and legislative structures
to ensure accountability and sustainable growth.
Pretty Okafor
PMAN president