The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) has called for better collaboration with stakeholders to curb piracy in Kano State.
The NCC Director-General, Mr John Asein, made the call at the 30th anniversary of the commission held on Tuesday in Kano.
The anniversary had as its theme “Changing the Copyright Narrative for Wealth Creation”.
According to the director-general, Kano has been a creative hotbed and should not be turned into a piracy hotspot.
Asein said: “There is a lot of lamentations from authors and publishers, and it appears that there is no adequate compensation for their inputs. We will not stop talking about copyright and its challenges.
“The more people understand the value of creativity and the role of copyright, the more they will rise up to their obligations and interface with the Nigerian Copyright Commission.
“We must be more creative in the way we handle copyright infringements and fashion out workable solutions.”
One way of achieving this, he said, was to engage more in public-private partnerships to handle the situation.
While saying that NCC would use intelligence in checking the pirates, Asein added “We may not achieve zero piracy overnight, but we will fight it to the end.”
In his remarks, Mr Abdulazeez Aresadu, Managing Director, Azeez Spotless Press Limited, said that the commission could not do without the inputs of printers in the fight against piracy.
“NCC should involve printers in all they want to do, to enable them achieve their aim; without printers, there is no education.
“Printers and NCC should always have interactive meetings to arrest copyright infringements”, he said.
Also, Mr John Uche, a bookseller, said that he was happy with the programme and urged NCC to tackle the issue of piracy without delay.
The programme was attended by authors, booksellers, publishers, producers, printers and school principals.
