By Nehi Igbinijesu
“Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.” Nnamdi Azikiwe should be alive today. Originality and creativity share the backseat across West Africa which now accounts for more than 70 percent of the world’s copyright theft and infringements, particularly in film and music. According to polls conducted over the past few years, a majority of Nigerians (94%) patronize Nigeria’s N3billion pirated film and music industry.
Despite TV and radio adverts to sensitize and discourage the use of pirated films and music, a whopping 88 percent of purchasers of pirated CDs and DVDs still do not understand the concept of copyright infringement and its illegality. The latest Hollywood blockbusters flood major streets of Nigerian cities almost before these movies reach our local box offices, reducing the takings of cinema owners. The local entertainment industry is not spared in this. Films and music are illegally duplicated and resold denying its copyright holders the benefits of their intellectual property.
One may easily assume that legislation on copyright infringement and theft has been the problem but it has not, Nigeria’s copyright laws are well thought out and water-tight. The problem of enforcing the laws has been the bane of this criminality. The country has made several laws dating back to 1988 pertaining to intellectual property protection, and has also ratified several copyright treaties, recent among which was the Patent Cooperation Treaty (ratified in 2005).
For the Federal Government, which is principally saddled with solving this problem, experts implore a robust approach to enshrining a culture of appreciation for copyrighted work:
Stronger Customs Enforcement. Nigerian ports and borders are clearly porous avenue for importing and exporting pirated items. Pirated books for instance, are known to come in from certain Asian Countries. These books, sometimes written by Nigerians, are sold in traffic jams; purchased by commuters who often do not know the criminality of making such purchases. Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country is the latest among many cases of intellectual property theft.
Inclusion of Copyright Law in Law School Curriculum. Inclusion of Copyright protection and intellectual property protection law courses in the curriculum of the country’s law schools will help improve the Nigerian sensibility towards the protection of intellectual property.
Raise Public Awareness. The government could do more through the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to raise the public awareness of the value of intellectual property and the need to protect it at all cost.
Elicit Public Buy-in. Through the Ministry of Trade and Investment, the government could create focus groups manned by legislators, actors, authors, musicians and other holders of intellectual property to liaise with the public in crafting a more inclusive legislation for copyright protection, infringement and theft.
Confirmation that the country’s revenue base may begin to dwindle by 2020 is very clear, given that our biggest buyer, the United States, would have achieved energy autonomy by then. It is therefore imperative that we begin looking to alternative revenue sources now to augment the economy in the event of a drop in oil revenue. Protecting Nigeria’s fledgling entertainment industry from intellectual property thieves will not only give credence to originality and creativity but portend a new avenue to eke out the hard cash from what may be Nigeria’s new mainstay- intellectual property.