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The CEO of Stingomania Entertainment, Ope Banwo has described the recent attack at the leadership of Collecting Society of Nigeria (COSON) by Charly Boy as unfair, irrelevant and libelous.According to the CEO, “It is most unfair of Charly Boy to attack the leadership of COSON the way he has done on the pages of newspapers without addressing the issues that are relevant to stakeholders in the industry other for him to say that Tony Okoroji and DG OF NCC, Bambo Adewopo are irresponsible.
Ope Banwo who is a US based lawyer and a former CEO of Dove Media further commented that the activities of the the former PMAN president are unproductive. He said it is ridiculous of the former PMAN president to accuse the legal adviser to his own Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) organization of bias for licensing COSON; common sense will suggest that if Bambo (Adewopo) were to be biased, he would have done it in favor of an organization that he is still officially their legal adviser instead of a new entity.
He said “Frankly, I am really curious to understand how Charly Boy could come out and blast Adewopo for licensing COSON. I mean the guy is the legal adviser to your own mcsn from what I hear. If Charly Boy’s own organization’s legal adviser is saying MCSN does not deserve to be re-licensed, what exactly does Charly Boy want us to do? That is clearly a vote of no confidence in him by the most important legal person attached to his organizationâ€.
Debunking claims of having issues with the bike loving musician, the attorney explained that on the contrary he admires the musician who’s gut in challenging the status quo he grew up admiring.
However, all Ope Banwo wants in the collecting body is change and results. While daring Charly Boy to come out and publish the list of people whose life got better with his collecting society or the people who received fair compensation for their copyrights inspite of all the okada riders show. Ope advises the Naija Bike crooner to get involved in fights that will produce results and not just fight for fighting sake.
Still talking on the unproductiveness of the MCSN strong man, Ope advises Charly Boy to take a leave and allow new and fresh hands like Banky W, MI, Don Jazzy to take over so as to move forward since Charly Boy has been around and being part of the system for too long to have any new creative ideas for anybody beyond personal fights with his contemporaries dating back to the 70s ad 80s.
He said “We need new wineskins for new wine bottles and I hope that when the dust settles at COSON, some of the young guns will be given opportunities to contribute. I mean we are talking of the era of Twitter, Facebook, ITUNES and CDbaby and music download of music on cell phones now, for God’s sake. Older generation like charley boy will simply find it hard to compete.
Explaining the rationale behind his taking sides with the Tony Okoroji led COSON, Ope Banwo explained that the COSON side seems to be the progressive side with better ideas and initiatives.
He further explained that as to what obtains in other developed countries, it is better to have a sole collecting body. Said he, “As you very well know, the previous regime where there were multiple collecting societies has played into the hands of rights users who have used the multiplicity of collectors as an excuse not to pay appropriate royalties to the artistes. The bottom line is that until we take away the divide and rule option for the rights users and all rights users unite under one collecting society, we really can’t tackle fair compensation for artistes across the board. That is why I am supporting COSON against the present failed arrangementâ€.
Recently at the Coson meeting, entertainment giants and stakeholders like Kenny Ogungbe and Onyeka Onwenu and Laolu Akins swore that they have not been paid adequate royalties by any collecting society. Kenny Ogunbe who claimed to have a repertoire of more than 700 titles swore that his royalties have not been paid by the users in Nigeria and Onyeka said something about receiving a ridiculous cheque once, for less that N100 for her works in the market. Yet, we all know that Nigerian music form more than 80% of the programming at most of our radio stations and are a major component for tv programming in the last 20 years.
Ope Banwo also explained the sorry side to his own story he said, “ I have not been in the country long enough to know if people have been receiving fat cheques in royalties or not, but I do know nobody has paid me anything for the music of DJ Zeez, Konga, or Midnight crew that I released over 5yrs ago which were mega hits and are still being played on major TV and radio stations 5 years after.
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