It is no longer news that the Copyright Society of Nigeria is in crisis and there seem to be no end in sight to this lingering drama.
Efe Omoregbe, who is laying claim to being the leader of the body accused Okoroji, who also claims to be the chairman of COSON, of running the association as a one-man business.
In an encounter with Punch, he said: “ He labelled us as disgruntled members but why are we disgruntled? Did you ask them why we are disgruntled? Why would we want to make COSON our cash cow? Have you weighed our net worth, what we have done and are still doing side by side with the people we want to replace? Did you sit down to process how an Audu Makori or Obi Asika is so hungry that it is COSON money they would chase to sort themselves out? So all of a sudden, Azeezat is a more established, successful business person and she is not interested in turning COSON to a cash cow as opposed to Obi Asika? Is it logical?
“We made a fatal mistake; when we sacked Okoroji, we did not publish his infractions. We thought we were being classy, we thought we were protecting our society’s image. We thought there was no point in dirty mud fights. Instead, we wanted to focus on the job. We wanted to partner with a world-class strategic development partner that would structure the organisation. The six of us who voted out Okoroji are only interested in making sure that COSON is properly structured and it runs well. We were upset because Okoroji was on the board of COSON as a director, he was chairman of COSON, consultant of COSON, his company was an agency to COSON and there was no proper procurement process. We are all educated and we know how corporations run.
There is what we call unethical practice, you cannot be judge and jury at the same time. You cannot sit down, create a need for an event, give the contract for the event to yourself, determine what is needed for the event to be executed; execute the contract, sit down and mark the event excellent, then put a fee to the amount the event would gulp, then ask people to gather themselves and sign for the approval of the event. Everything is in the petition we wrote against him but people are not asking him the right questions. Ask him if he does not collect some money as commission on royalties paid to intellectual property owners” he said.