| Foreigners rounded
up for piracy
By Sola Balogun
Friday July 30, 2004
Barely one month after a group of 12 Chinese pirates were
nabbed at their illegal CD Plant at Oregun area of Lagos,
another set of pirates including six Malaysians, a Fillipino
and a Nigerian were again arrested Wednesday by officials
of the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC) and policemen for
CD replication.
The foreign pirates, who are believed to be in the same illegal
business as their Chinese counterparts, were arrested at a
nearby location to where the Chinese met their waterloo. At
about 10 am Wednesday, the NCC inspectors and policemen swooped
on the alleged criminals while the latter were busy reproducing
artistes’ works.
While parading the six Malaysians, one Filipino and a Nigerian
(Mr Solonachi Ekeh) before the media, Mrs Loretta Njoku, acting
Director General of the Nigeria Copyright Commission alleged
that the illegal plant called Akina is a syndicate of both
Nasinma and Chris Ejik. Her words: "The illegal plant
called Akina was being manned mainly by the Chinese when we
arrested them recently. Today, we have discovered yet another
replicating plant called Chris Ejik with eleven plants."
Njoku disclosed that while Akina had five plants to reproduce
CD and cassettes, Chris Ejik has eleven plants "which
can produce two hundred thousand CDs in a day." Also,
reports got to the NCC that the plants enabled Chris Ejik
to sell as many as 24 million copies of CDs in a month.
Meanwhile, Njoku said that her commission had carried out
investigation to discover that Chris-Ejik Group is not a registered
company with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
According to Njoku who bemoaned the growing rate of CD piracy
in Nigeria, the crime "is becoming very worrisome as
it is not up to a month that we heard news about this illegal
business." She added that what is sad about the crime
is that a Nigerian citizen actually owns the company (Chris-Ejik)
which harbours the foreign pirates.
"But we at the NCC would continue to hammer it to their
(pirates) ears that there is no more hiding place for them
in Nigeria. Time is up for them and they have to leave or
face the law," explained Njoku who regretted that men
of the Nigerian Immigration Services granted the Chinese pirates
bail without informing the commission.
However, the acting DG said the commission would not allow
the Malaysians and Filipino to go unpunished this time around.
"We cannot be fooled again. We will first hand them over
to the police for detention until the ECMC is notified of
the case."
In his own words, Mr Richard Rademan described the pirates
as criminals who must be prosecuted. He noted that his organisation
has since inception been on the trail of the foreign pirates
who come to Africa from the Asian countries to perpetrate
the crime.
Many of the pirated works (CDs) at both the head office (21,
Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun) and the factory(Olufunke Atitebi
Street) were pornographic movies displaying immoral sexual
acts. Also in large quantities were works of artistes like
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Celine Dion, as well as scores of local
and foreign musicians.
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