The Nigerian Copyright Commission has confiscated pirated textbooks in some schools in Ogun State and arrested one suspect on Thursday.
The schools visited were both senior and junior arms of Remo Secondary School, Sagamu; Lifegate Group of Schools, off Aiyepe Road, Sagamu; and Focus International School, Agura, Sagamu.
The state coordinator of the commission from the Ibadan office, Mrs Oluropo Oke, in the company of officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, said the exercise was aimed at combating the evil of piracy in the country.
Oke disclosed that the raid was sequel to intelligence gathered that these schools were allegedly involved in selling pirated books to the students, which is against the rules of the federal government as captured under the Copyright Act 2022.
She said: “Today’s exercise is to demonstrate another strong commitment of the National Copyright Commission to fight piracy to a standstill in the country. Today, we have taken the war and enforcement against piracy to schools that are selling pirated books to their students
“And we are not just coming out today, we have done our surveillance and investigation, so we have our intelligence reports that these schools are involved in this terrible act that is making original owners of these textbooks not to reap where they have sowed.
”We all must join hands together to fight this theft of intellectual property of the people. So for the schools visited, we made some seizures, and we have equally left behind letters of invitation to our office at Ibadan, Oyo State.”
She explained that in order not to run foul of the copyright laws, the schools and booksellers must always endeavour to patronise the publishers of these books while also keeping receipts of such business transactions to serve as evidence during enforcement raids.
Oke urged the Ogun State government to brace up for the campaign against the use of pirated books across the state, saying that the information at the agency’s disposal pointed to the fact that a lot of schools in the state are allegedly engaged in piracy activities.
The suspect arrested, who simply identified himself as Akinyemi, said that he was never aware that the books were pirated copies.
Akinyemi said: “I don’t know that these books are pirated copies; the suppliers always send them to me from Lagos State while I supply the school. If I am aware I wouldn’t be caught doing that, I was just innocently doing my business.”