MOSES EKPO COMMISSIONS COSON HOUSE IN LAGOS

ALLEN, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria – Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State and first Director General of the Intellectual Property Organization(IPO) Dr. Moses Frank Ekpo on Saturday commissioned the newly built headquarters of the Copyright Society of Nigeria, COSON in Allen, Ikeja, Lagos.

He commissioned it not withstanding the heavy rains which delayed the proceedings for more than 5 hours.

He was not alone. He was joined by legends of Nigerian music. They include, Sir Victor Uwaifo, Afrojuju King and Sir Shina Peters and Chris Ajilo. Also present at the event was Kenny Saint Brown and a host of others.

Speaking during the event, Ekpo describe the edifice as very befiting of Nigerian misicians. In his speech, Chairman, COSON, Chief Tony Okoroji said it is the first time that any group in the creative industry will be putting up a structure of this nature soley funded by members without taking loan from any bank.

He said that musicians are no longer the dregs of the earth, stressing that anytime anyone is told that nothing works in Nigeria, he should be told that COSON is working.

The COSON House is coming on just 10 years of the existence of COSON as a body.

“The COSON House accommodates the largest database of music in the nation with millions of entries run on documentation platforms like the WIPO designed WIPOCOS and the CISAC, CISNET. It also houses the COSONET, a digital platform that electronically monitors the public use of music across the country and assists in empirical distribution of music copyright royalties to copyright owners”, he said, adding “another digital platform running at the COSON House is CLAP, the COSON Licensing Application Platforms which allows any potential user of music to easily obtain license for the use of music anytime, anywhere”, Okoroji said.