SATURDAY BREAKFAST with TONY OKOROJI
It was 2017. I was in Abuja that Tuesday morning at the Federal High Court. I was to be a witness in an important case brought by COSON against a major Abuja hotel. The next morning, at 9 0โclock, I was scheduled to be in Calabar on the witness stand at the Federal High Court in another case brought by COSON against the Cross River State Government over copyright infringement at the Calabar Carnival.
My arrangement was to travel by the only flight from Abuja to Calabar that Tuesday afternoon after testifying in Abuja and to spend the night in Calabar.
The courtroom in Abuja was filled with lawyers, a good number of them, Senior Advocates of Nigeria. They came with their politician clients. As is the practice, any case that has a senior advocate gets precedence over other cases. And so, the senior advocates began to argue. Since I did not have a senior advocate, I had to wait.
I waited and waited for my case to be called. For where? The one flight from Abuja to Calabar left. I stepped out of the court, made a desperate call and had a new arrangement to be on a flight from Abuja to Uyo with the hope of doing the about two hours journey from Uyo to Calabar, by road. I was still in the court when the Abuja/ Uyo flight also left.
At a point, it became clear that my case was not going to be called. I got very agitated. I had arranged for my lawyer in the Calabar case to fly from Lagos to Calabar and he was already in Calabar waiting for me. So much time, money and energy had been invested in the matters and I was on the verge of missing both the case in Abuja and that in Calabar. What if the judge strikes out the Calabar matter for lack of diligent prosecution?
It was now early evening. There was no flight to Uyo or Calabar anymore. My being in Calabar the next morning looked impossible. It was then I called the airport and asked if there was any flight going to Port Harcourt. Port Harcourt to Calabar by road would take almost six hours on a normal day. I was told there was one seat left on a flight to Port Harcourt scheduled to leave in about one hour. I begged for the seat to be left for me. I got a cab and asked the cab guy to drive like mad to the airport. I was the last person to board the flight as the door was about to be shut.
We arrived Port Harcourt just before 8.00 pm. It was impossible to get a cab at that time to go to Calabar. I ultimately got an old small car at an exorbitant price to take me to Uyo. By the time we navigated the go-slow infested streets of Port Harcourt and struck the highway to Uyo, it was almost 9.00 pm.
We then began a journey that did not make much sense. The road was pitch dark. The headlights on our car were not very good. It was a lonely road. There was no car behind us, overtaking us or coming in front of us. There were very few houses on either side of the road. I called a senior friend in Uyo to explain where I was, and he screamed. In a trembling voice, he told me that we were driving through the heart of a most dangerous part of Ogoni land and that no sane person drives on that road after 7.00 pm. How else do I get to Calabar? It was too late to turn back. All kinds of crazy thoughts crossed my mind. What if we got kidnapped by the much-feared Ogoni gangs? What if our rather old car broke down in the middle of nowhere?
Lo and behold, we made it in one piece to Uyo after midnight. I took a deep breath, found a hotel, had a bath and closed my eyes for a few hours. Before 6.00 a.m. the next morning, I was on my way to Calabar. My immutable late colleague and friend, the Rub-a-Dub master, Ras Kimono was waiting for me in Calabar to cheer me up. Waiting with him was his sweetheart who not even death could separate him from, the beautiful Efe who died in Lagos shortly after Kimono was buried in Onicha Olona. Also waiting in Calabar was my good friend, Patrick Harry Doyle who travelled to Calabar and joined me to testify in the case.
I got to Calabar before 9.00 am that Wednesday morning and drove straight to the Federal High Court. I mounted the witness box and testified with all the passion I could muster. After all, I had journeyed through the shadow of death to be in Calabar. After what I had been through, I could not imagine how we would lose the case.
My midnight journey through Ogoni land to Calabar was just one of the many journeys I did in the case to establish that no one, not even a government is above the law and that my lifetime work in intellectual property is not in vain.
On Monday, May 14, 2018, in Calabar, the Federal High Court delivered the landmark judgment in which it awarded the sum of Five Hundred Million Naira to COSON against the Cross River State Government for copyright infringement at the Calabar Carnival. The court went further to grant a perpetual injunction against the organizers of the Calabar Carnival from further infringement of copyright in the musical works in the repertoire of COSON deployed at the carnival.
The judge to whom the matter was initially assigned unfortunately died before commencing trial. There were so many fruitless trips to Calabar and so many adjournments.
I travelled to Calabar at least 15 times in search of justice. I was told that I was a fool to expect to win a case in Calabar against the Cross River State Government. But we won both at the Federal High Court and at the Court of Appeal, each sitting in Calabar.
It took us nearly 10 solid years of stringent legal battles to win the historic victories for Nigerian musicians, the entire Nigerian creative family and the copyright system across the world.
Two years after the Court of Appeal affirmed the Federal High Court judgement, we are in another phase of the war. The Cross River State Government which has refused to obey the orders of the court, is displaying the kind of recklessness and lawlessness a democratically elected government should never contemplate.
We have even been informed that the State Governor has suggested that since the initial judgment was delivered before he took office, he is under no obligation to pay.
Somebody should tell him that he is wrong, very wrong.
See you next week.
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