…Unveils Abuja action plan

About 70 per cent of the revenue that should have gone to the Nigerian film market annually is lost to piracy. This is according to the Federal Government, which also noted that Nigeria’s booming creative economy is losing billions of naira to piracy, putting jobs, investment and the earnings of filmmakers, musicians and millions of young Nigerians at risk as illegal digital platforms increasingly siphon value from legitimate creative businesses.

The scale of this threat is what has prompted the government to launch a fresh coordinated offensive against online piracy, bringing copyright authorities, security agencies, telecommunications operators, internet service providers, digital platforms and rights owners into a common enforcement framework.

At the centre of the new push is the proposed Abuja Copyright Action Plan, which the government says will move the fight against piracy from policy declarations to coordinated, measurable enforcement.

Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, said the threat had moved beyond conventional copyright infringement.

Speaking at the National Seminar on Copyright, Cybersecurity and Nigeria’s Creative and Digital Economy in Abuja on Monday, Fagbemi said digital piracy had become a sophisticated, borderless enterprise operating through illegal streaming platforms, pirate websites and rogue digital services.

The Attorney-General who was represented by the Solicitor General, Ms Jedy Agba, said infringing content could be reproduced, modified and distributed globally within seconds, while perpetrators, infrastructure and illicit proceeds could be concealed across multiple jurisdictions.

According to him, the growing intersection between copyright infringement, organised cybercrime, e-commerce vulnerabilities and digital infrastructure makes a coordinated national response imperative.

“Online piracy cannot be tackled effectively by copyright enforcement authorities operating in isolation,” he said.

According to figures attributed to UNESCO, Nollywood produces about 2,500 films annually and directly employs an estimated one million people, meaning every major revenue stream diverted by piracy potentially affects a vast chain of producers, actors, technicians, marketers, distributors and other creative workers.

The music industry is also becoming an increasingly valuable target for legitimate digital commerce, and piracy.

Spotify’s Loud & Clear figures show that legitimate income generated by Nigerian music rose from N11 billion in 2022 to N25 billion in 2023, before jumping to N58 billion in 2024 and N60 billion in 2025.

Nigerian artists generated 30.3 billion streams globally in 2025, while 58 per cent of royalties went to independent artists and labels.

The figures illustrate both the explosive growth of Nigeria’s music economy and the amount of legitimate income that can be placed at risk when copyrighted works are illegally copied, streamed or distributed.

Fagbemi called for real-time intelligence sharing between agencies, stronger cooperation with internet service providers and digital platforms, and standardised lawful procedures for rapidly taking down or blocking infringing content.

He also directed stakeholders to exploit technology for detecting and disrupting piracy while maintaining constitutional due process and protecting legitimate digital businesses.

The Attorney-General said the Abuja Copyright Action Plan must not become another policy document gathering dust.

It must, he said, identify specific actions, responsible institutions, implementation timelines and mechanisms for monitoring compliance.

The government also wants the plan to expose regulatory and operational gaps and assign clear ownership to agencies responsible for closing them.

Fagbemi said the Nigerian Copyright Commission had already intensified enforcement, including takedown and domain-blocking operations against major pirate platforms, arrests of suspects and criminal prosecutions.

But he warned that maintaining the momentum would require sustained cooperation from the private sector.

He called on telecommunications operators, internet service providers and digital platforms to protect their systems, while rights holders should deploy available legal and technological tools to defend their works.

On its part, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), also warned that digital piracy has become intertwined with cybersecurity risks.

In his goodwill message, the Director, WIPO Nigeria Office, Dr. Oluwatobi Moody, said illicit digital platforms can expose users to malware, facilitate identity concealment and threaten the integrity of digital infrastructure.

He commended Nigeria for modernising its copyright regime through the Copyright Act 2022, but stressed that the challenge was now to turn the legal framework into practical enforcement.

Moody said WIPO Nigeria office was ready to support the NCC with technical tools, including WIPO ALERT, which can help disrupt the financial lifelines of pirate sites, and its Building Respect for IP framework for awareness and training.

He also disclosed that a national project on developing strategies and tools to combat online piracy was launched last year.

Earlier in his welcome remarks, the Director General of Nigerian Copyright Commission, Dr. John Asein, said the convening of the seminar was a show of commitment by the federal government to disrupt the activities of the pirates, adding that the NCC has stepped up its commitments in recent times and has done more to ensure that the sector is not only regulated by law, but it also takes steps to implement and ensure that Nigeria’s creative enterprises get the benefits of the technology that is now available for them to put out their work.

He said the seminar marks a critical shift in the piracy debate, from treating copyright infringement merely as a legal violation to confronting it as a threat to jobs, investment, entrepreneurship, digital security and economic growth.