Any moment from now, the Nigerian Copyright Commission will organize a big press conference or issue a press release accusing me and COSON of trying to bring down Mr John Asein, their Director-General alleged to be neck deep in serial corruption. They will tell you that we have declared war on Mr. Asein who is doing 'a very good job" because we do not want him to 'audit' COSON.
They will not answer the weighty allegations made against Mr Asein. Did he do or did he not do the things he has been accused of? For instance, did he illegally continue to collect salary from the federal government after he had retired from service? Did he continue to sign cheques on behalf of REPRONIG, a CMO regulated by the NCC, long after becoming DG of NCC? In other words, was he heading the regulator and the regulated organizations at the same time? As a public officer, was John Asein the Director of a private company, something expressly forbidden by the Public Service Rules?
I can bet you that at the NCC, they will not see the bewildering conflict of interest or the stunning array of misdeeds fuelled by greed, Mr. Asein is alleged to have soaked himself in. I will not be surprised if I am accused of going after Mr. John Asein because he does not come from my village or because I badly want his job or because I want a contract which he did not deliver.
I have no doubt that a juju man has been engaged by his friends to get Mr. Asein out of the 'mess' and some prayer warriors have been employed to pray ceaselessly that I contract the coronavirus and leave Mr. Asein alone to continue to do his 'very good job'.
Unfortunately, this is how low our country has sunk.
I will be the last person to publicly accuse anyone of doing something wrong when I know that he has not done so. I have gone to court many-many times to defend my name against false accusations. Indeed, I have several defamation cases pending in court. I believe that a man's reputation is worth more than money and ought to be vigorously defended.
If Mr. Asein will tell the truth, he will report that I have confronted him with these allegations, not on the phone, not by email but one-on-one. I left Lagos for Abuja to see Mr. Asein over these issues. Mr. Asein was kind enough to come to my hotel room to discuss these matters. We spent hours talking. He could not offer any explanation, not to talk of any good explanation for what he did. I know what defamation means and COSON would not have gone public without giving the man a chance to clear the air.
Why does this matter? I have spent a good part of my life fighting for a decent copyright system in Nigeria. Long before it became obvious, I believed that the intellectual property economy would drive the world. Working with great Nigerians like Prof. Egerton Uvieghara, Prof. Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, who just passed on, Prince Tony Momoh, Prince Bola Ajibola and Mr. Moses Frank Ekpo, I did everything possible to have the NCC set up. I organized risky demonstrations, served in the committee that drafted the Copyright Act and served twice on the Board of the NCC. Indeed, the memo that went to the Babangida Government to set up the NCC was written on my desk and sent to Prince Tony Momoh who was then Minister of Information & Culture. Put simply, Copyright has been my life.
I look at what the NCC has become and I shudder. The organization set up to uplift the Nigerian creative industry has become one that shamelessly decimates the industry. The civil servants have forgotten why they are called civil servants. They are determined to be the masters of those they were appointed to serve.
Maybe because the NCC is not considered politically important and is not the Customs or NNPC, it has been foisted with a succession of poor leadership whose key interest is to grab all the power they can grab whether lawful or not and chop all the money they can chop.
We have watched in wonder as the NCC became the law maker, the accuser, the judge and the jury in its own case? Without question, the NCC has become a monster and needs to be tamed.
Oh yes, I hear they are coming after me. You know what they are planning? Rather than deal with the issues, they are searching with a tooth comb and studying everything I have written in Saturday Breakfast and elsewhere. They think they can bring me down under the cybercrime law. That is how desperate they are. You know that the NCC filed criminal charges against me under the Copyright Act which resulted in nothing. Now, this! Oh! my God!
See you next week.
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