Chai!!! This is gbege o. When will our people stop investing heavily in pirated goods. Now they will have to pay much more for the release of these goods and in turn the goods will be very expensive for consumers to buy. So the people suffering from all of these are the consumers.
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| Image source: Nigerian Custom Service |
DIRECTOR-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), Afam Ezekude, on Tuesday, revealed that goods worth N10 billion in 24 containers were seized by men of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) at the Lagos Port and handed over to the commission.
This was even as he stated that piracy was an organised crime and as such, there should be concerted efforts from all stakeholders to tackle the menace in the country.
Speaking while receiving the Comptroller-General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retd), who paid a familiarisation visit to the NCC office at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja, Ezekude informed that lots of pirated works entered the country from China and other Asian countries.
The NCC boss informed the Comptroller-General of Customs of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the two organisations in 2011, which enabled NCC to set up a unit at Lagos Port to carry out joint inspection, with a view to ensuring that goods coming into Nigeria conformed to copyright laws of the country.
While acknowledging that the commission had initially been receiving cooperation from Customs operatives at the port, Ezekude, however, lamented that NCC was not getting the usual cooperation now.
“We started very well and I will like the cooperation continues for us to achieve our respective mandates,” the NCC boss said.
According to him, port operators ought to realise that the commission had a genuine work to do at the ports, appealing that NCC should have access to shipping manifest, with a view to ensuring that pirated works were not allowed to come into the country.
Responding, Colonel Ali informed that he was on the visit, with a view to introducing himself to strategic stakeholders, which NCC was one, adding that it was also meant to create a platform, where both the Customs and the NCC could interact on a regular basis.
Ali, who solicited greater collaboration between the two organisations, stated that both NCC and the Customs were working towards achieving a single goal, submitting that in view of that, they had to work together.
“All of us are working for one goal— to uplift this nation. We have a lot of things in common, hence, need to work together,” the Customs boss stated.
He implored the management of NCC to include Customs officials in their training programmes, saying that would enable Customs personnel to be grounded in copyright issues and enhance collaboration between the two organisations.
Speaking during a similar visit to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Ali declared that eyes
were on both Customs and the FIRS, both of which he described as the pillars to generate revenue for government, in view of dwindling oil revenue.
He informed that his visit was to solidify the existing synergy between both revenue generating organisations, in order to see areas that could be further strengthened, considering the fact that both were working together for the same objectives.
Culled from the Nigerian Tribune
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