The Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu had stressed the need for a robust inter- agency collaboration to check the rising incidents of intellectual property theft in the country especially that of plagiarism and disk replication.
Magu made this call on his behalf by the Zonal Head of the Commission in the South East, Usman Imam while receiving the Acting State Coordinator of Nigeria Copyright Commission, Enugu state, Mr. Okwudili Macfoy Akachukwu, who paid him a courtesy call with some management staff on Tuesday August 6, 2019.
The EFCC Chairman who noted that the war on intellectual property is huge and very tough stressed that with inter-agency cooperation, successes must be achieved.
“There are immigration violation involved as most of these CD replicating centres have some foreigners especially Asians who merely get entry visa into the country without work permit, working in camps and laundering proceeds back to their countries with the connivance of some unscrupulous law enforcement agents,” he said.
He said that being the pioneer desk officer of Intellectual Property Section in EFCC Lagos office some years back, as well as going to the global intellectual property Academy, in Alexandria, Virginia, USA on enforcement programme and leading some joint operations then in Lagos, he noted that some laws of the Copyright Commission, especially on plagiarism needed strengthening.
The EFCC boss promised that the Commission was ready to improve on the existing relationship between the two organisations and that EFCC’s facilities are available whenever they are needed by a sister government agency.
“We will be there with you as long as you wish to work with us. We are willing to partner with you because we are very serious at EFCC and whatever we put in our capacity and resources, it must succeed. The facilities are open for you to do your work so that we all can see a better Nigeria,” he promised.
Earlier in his remark, Nwachukwu who recalled that his organisation and EFCC has an MoU in the area of training, assistance of detention facilities and in prosecution of cases said though the relationship of both agencies had been cordial, they were at the zonal office to firm it.
“We are also here to let the Commission know that in recent times some people who have committed illegalities by copyrightable materials abroad are using it to laundering their proceeds of crimes back home and at this period, where we have cases of terrorism, we do not know where such funds will end up,” he stated.
He called on EFCC to bring to bear its huge experiences in law enforcement to collaborate with NCC and other agencies to rid Nigeria of not only intellectual fraud but other forms of economic and financial crimes. “There must be synergy among Nigerians especially the law enforcement agencies in riding this country of all forms of crimes”, Nwachukwu stressed.
He was accompanied in the visit by some senior officials of the organisations including Nweke Martina, Pauline Onuchukwu, Machebe Maria and Glory Ilobachie.
