The new president of the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA), Alhaji Lukman Dauda, has pledged that the association will continue to collaborate with the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC) and other relevant agencies to combat piracy in the country.
Alhaji Dauda, who is also the managing director of Evans Brothers Nigeria Publishers Limited, lamented the effects of piracy on the country’s education and publishing sectors. He added that greater efforts would be made to ensure regular and continuous public sensitization on the ills of piracy in society.
He spoke on Thursday, February 20, in Ibadan, Oyo State, during his investiture as the 25th president of the NPA, where he promised that his administration would introduce measures to encourage member firms to actively participate in the fight against piracy.
Alhaji Dauda, who served as vice president in the immediate past administration of Chief (Dr.) Uchenna Cyril Anioke, stated that he would continue to engage with the government and allied agencies to strengthen the publishing industry and protect the interests of its members.
In his remarks, the chairman of the occasion and board member of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Honourable Sunday Adepoju, emphasized the importance of the publishing industry in national development, saying, “A country cannot develop without a strong education sector, and the publishing industry is an integral part of that sector.
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“This, therefore, shows that we cannot have a great education sector without a thriving publishing industry,” Honourable Adepoju said, as he sympathized with publishers over the high cost of book production and the impact of piracy.
“You can imagine a publisher going through the stress of producing a book with the high costs of materials and labor, only for a greedy individual to pirate the book,” Honourable Adepoju said.
The TETFund board member added that the government would continue exploring ways to reduce production costs and combat piracy to positively impact the education and publishing sectors.
He then urged the new president to work more closely with government agencies to address the challenges facing publishers in the country.
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