The Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) has called on the Federal Government to immediately request that no money resulting from the Copyright Levy for the Nigerian music industry, the first tranche of which was released recently, be shared or spent by anyone forthwith until an equitable process for the distribution of the funds among the various right owners is determined in an open and transparent manner.

This, according to COSON, will ensure that the funds resulting from the private copy levy scheme are not frittered away or rapidly stolen.

The COSON Chairman, Tony Okoroji, made this call in his address at a press conference held on Thursday, February 19, 2026, at COSON House, Ikeja, Lagos.

He also called on the Federal Government to immediately dismantle what he called the “scam machine,” which, according to the COSON Chairman, was foisted by the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, on the nation to siphon money from innocent Nigerian musicians.

At the press briefing, COSON made the following ten demands: “That to make certain that there is sanity and stability in the Nigerian creative industry going forward, the Federal Government must intervene immediately and ensure that the scam machine foisted on the Nigerian music industry by Mr. Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, to enable him, his friends and cohorts to siphon money belonging to innocent Nigerian musicians and other creative people, is dismantled immediately.

“That to ensure that the funds resulting from the private copy levy scheme are not frittered away or rapidly stolen, the Federal Government should immediately request that no money resulting from the scheme be shared or spent by anyone forthwith until an equitable process for the distribution of the funds among the various right owners is determined in an open and transparent manner.

“That the purported approval/licence given to Musical Copyright Society Nigeria to collect royalties on behalf of innocent Nigerian musicians by Mr. Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, without following due process, be immediately annulled in the same manner that the earlier approval/licence given to MCSN was annulled by President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“That the seven criminal cases at the Federal High Court instituted against MCSN and its officers, which under bizarre circumstances were stalled by the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, be re-opened and fully prosecuted by the Nigeria Copyright Commission or, in the alternative, by a private prosecutor appointed by the Attorney-General of the Federation.”

The demands also include: “That a thorough forensic audit of MCSN be mandated and conducted by a notable auditing firm to determine who received what from the 2.7 billion naira obtained from Multichoice and all the other funds that have been collected by MCSN as royalties on behalf of Nigerian musicians, the music industry, and foreign right owners; that a thorough forensic audit of the Nigerian Copyright Commission be conducted to establish that the funds allocated to the commission have been justifiably utilised; that a proper investigation of the sources of income of the leadership of MCSN be carried out without delay.”

COSON, Nigeria’s biggest copyright collective management organisation, with members and affiliates spread across the nation and across the world, requested that all members of COSON “should be warned that the recent desperate campaign of the leadership of MCSN asking right owners to join their discredited organisation is to use them to cover up their long-standing deception and daylight robbery of the funds belonging to the musicians of Nigeria; and that no member of COSON should answer the call of the shameless, distressed, and factionalised leadership of PMAN which fraudulently sold the land allocated by the government to build the PMAN Plaza in Abuja and pocketed the money and is now looking for Nigerian musicians to use as pawns in its fraudulent marriage with the leadership of MCSN to further defraud the musicians of Nigeria of billions of naira belonging to them.”

At the press conference, Okoroji gave a very detailed account of the birth and development of the Private Copy Levy scheme from which the sum of N1.2 billion was said to have been recently allocated to Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN) by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) for distribution to copyright owners in the music industry.

He assured COSON members and affiliates across the nation and its reciprocal representation partners across the world that COSON will continue to forcefully defend their rights and that transparency and accountability will remain the watchwords of COSON.