Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) Chairman, Tony Okoroji, has revealed in a live interview how the organization spent 30 million Naira on the security of office between 2017 to 2018.
When asked how the firm in 2017 was spending one million Naira on the security of office which overnight grew to 31 million in 2018.
He said “In 2017 we opened a new COSON house, my people like to describe it as magnificent COSON house, I’m very proud of what we have done, that is the only building the creative industry in Nigeria has built for itself, we arrange properties everywhere, that’s the one building we can claim to be our own, we didn’t get any government money to build COSON house, we didn’t get any loan or grant from anywhere, we built it on our own. When we now did that, I guess some people concluded that ah collective management is lucrative and all kinds of people made all kinds of effort to with all due respect hijack COSON.
“We have built COSOn house, the building is there we had some money in the bank which was money to be distributed to right owners and in a typical Nigerian fashion everybody began to struggle to take over COSON house we had a situation where they brought armed SARS to come and chase us out, they took us to EFCC, ICPC, NCC, they fled criminal cases against us, all kinds of things to chase us out for doing good work for our country, for our profession, for putting up a structure that any Nigerian in our industry ought to be proud of. So what did we have to do, we had to secure the place. We had to bring a security company that is there permanently, we had to bring police from the IG to secure the place, which is why when you go there today, COSON house continues to stand, continues to shine to the glory of the Nigerian creative industry”, said Okoroji.