NCC seizes pirated films worth N600m

The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) has seized pirated works worth N600 million during its raid of seven warehouses in Awodi-Ora Estate of Apapa, Lagos State.
According to Mr. Obi Ezeilo, the NCC zonal manager, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, it was part of its ongoing war against piracy.
Ezeilo said the commission seized thousands of boxes containing textbooks, motivational books, bibles, dictionaries, medical and health books, among others.
Among the pirated books were “Songs of Praise,’’ belonging to University Press, “Mastering Steps to Numbers for Beginners,’’ belonging to Metropolitan Publishers, “Engineering Mathematics’,’ a Macmillan Publishers book, “Oxford Dictionary,’’ University Press, and “Modular English Course,’’ Evans Publishers.
Also seized were “Champion Mathematics,’’ belonging to Macmillan Publishers, “Primary Mathematics Workbook,’’ belonging to University Press Plc, “Living as God’s Children’,’ belonging to African University Press, “Holy Bible,” belonging to Holman Publishers, and “Social Studies,” belonging to Lantern Publishers.
Ezeilo said the anti-piracy operations unit of the commission had been monitoring warehouses in Apapa suspected to be storing pirated books.
He said: “The anti-piracy raid followed a series of surveillance and intelligence gathering by the commission within Apapa environs.
“These provided the commission the clues to the targeted location, where the literary works were pirated and stored.”
The zonal head said that a team of copyright inspectors, in collaboration with the Nigeria Police, carried out the anti-piracy operations, and, throughout the raid, none of the operators of the warehouses were found on the premises: “Only the landlord of the premises, Anthony Iwuala, showed up and said he was not aware that the warehouses were being used for the storage of pirated literary works.”