The Nigerian Copyright Commission on Thursday storm Ogun State and arrested eight sellers of pirated books and sealed their shops at both popular Sapon book sellers' hub and Sango Ota.
The enforcement team accompanied by armed officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, was led by Mrs Oluropo Oke, State Coordinator from Ibadan NCC office.
The first port of call was Under bridge, Sango Ota where two alleged sellers of pirated books were arrested with hundreds of copies of suspected pirated books while their shops were also sealed.
The team later moved to Sapon market, Abeokuta where additional six alleged sellers of pirated books were arrested and their shops sealed while many books were also seized.
Speaking on the essence of the exercise, Mrs Oke said that the NCC only came out to enforce the laws and stop all that are encouraging piracy and sabotaging the economic efforts of other Nigerians.
Oke said that the exercise is to send a very strong signal to those who think that they can be smiling to banks while those who toiled day and night to have their books published will be battling depression or debt because they could not recoup what they have invested on their publishing works.
She said "The essence of today's exercise is to check activities of pirates, that piracy is ill to the society. Piracy kills the economy and encourages substandard goods. Piracy doesn't allow right owners to benefit both morally and economically from the labour of their intellectual efforts.
"It discourages authours because they are denied the right to enjoy what they laboured for.
"One of the statutory mandates of the Commission is to enforce the law, regulates and prosecute copyright offenders. Fo today's exercise, owners of eight bookshops selling pirated works were arrested.
'And if these offenders are found guilty, I can assure you they will definitely go to jail. This kind of offence as specified in the Copyright Act, 2022 attracts five years imprisonment".
Oke urged the book sellers to resist the temptation of patronising pirates, but to rather buy original books from the publishers and sell original books to the public.
She added that this is when the book sellers can see themselves as proud Nigerians who are contributing legally to its economic growth and development.
A publisher who was part of the enforcement team, Mr Olatunde Oguniran described piracy as killing and depressing
Oguniran said "who will be happy working for another person to eat? Piracy is like an aborted pregnancy, it makes publishers and writers sad because some people somewhere are running you out of business while they are making profit that is even more than ten times what the real owners of the job is getting".
He said that for the war against piracy to be won, the publishers, writers and the NCC must strengthen their collaboration and resolve to battle this menace to standstill.
Oguniran also urged book sellers to always insist on buying from the original publishers so as to be saved the embarrassment of arrest and possible prosecution.
Speaking with our Correspondent, one the suspects who simply identified himself as Tedus arrested in Ota said that he regretted selling pirated books.
Tedus claimed that he never knew the books were pirated as he got them from one of his suppliers.
The enforcement team later left with the suspects and seized copies of suspected pirated books to the NCC, Ibadan Zonal office for further investigation and possible prosecution.
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