“THE SOUND OF SILENCE”

“NO MUSIC DAY”

2025 OFFICIAL BROADCAST

• Made on behalf of the Nigerian Music Industry by the Chairman, Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON)
• Chief Tony Okoroji.
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Hello!

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This Monday, September 1, 2025, the Nigerian music industry, once again marks “No Music Day”.

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September 1 has been celebrated in Nigeria every year as “No Music Day” in remembrance of that historic day in 2009 when a group of Nigerian artistes began huge rallies in front of the National Theatre, Lagos, and went on a one-week hunger strike to protest the cruel abuse of the rights of creative people in Nigeria.

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It will be recalled that on September 1, 2009, for the first time in human history, the music industry in a country called for the halt of the broadcast of music by broadcast stations all over the nation, for a whole day. This action captured the imagination of the world and Nigeria’s “No Music Day” was born.

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September 1 in Nigeria, has become a day the music industry has dedicated to bringing the attention of the nation to the widespread infringement of the rights of song writers, composers, performers, music publishers, record labels and other stakeholders in the creative industry in Africa’s most populous nation, a battle that has been led primarily by Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) and its thousands of members across Nigeria.

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I welcome everyone to this year’s “No Music Day” broadcast, with the theme, “the Sound of Silence”.

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Please, imagine a world without music. As popular as rice is, I have heard people say that they do not eat rice. As popular as football is, I know people who do not like football. I am yet to see anyone who says he does not like music.

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Imagine that a bouncing baby is born and everyone comes to the naming ceremony and there is no music. Imagine that a man of great achievement dies and many come to the funeral and there is no music. Imagine the birthday parties we celebrate every day and the festivals we hold here and there, without music. Imagine our radio and TV stations without music, our hotels and nightclubs without music; no music in our cars, no music in our busses, no music on our cell phones and no music in our homes.

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Do we realize how much music enables us to face and deal with the drudgery and challenges of everyday living?

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Just think about life without music, the sound of silence all around us. What kind of life would that be?

It is my hope that after this broadcast,musicians across the country, music users, proprietors of event venues, culture administrators, broadcasters, intellectual property activists, and everyone who loves music,will partake in subsequently discussing the issues raised in this broadcast.

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Permit me to rewind to15 years ago.Specifically on September 1, 2009, practitioners in the entire Nigerian creative family massed in front of the National Theatre in Lagos and for days, refused to eat or drink and demanded that the over 400 licensed broadcast stations in the country, who use music as the key raw material for their operations, should broadcast no music for a significant period of that day. So began what we have celebrated every year since, as “No Music Day”. 

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The mass hunger strike of the creative industry beginning on September 1, 2009, was a result of our frustration with the overwhelming level of intellectual property theft which is one of the malignant symptoms of a general national malaise. For instance, many of the broadcasting stations, who freely used other people’s property for their operations were in shock. Their proprietors asked how they would continue to operate without other people’s music which they had appropriated and deployed for free. They failed to consider that elsewhere in the world, broadcast stations pay for the music they broadcast.

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Sadly, everywhere you turn in Nigeria, people have been reaping where they did not sow and comfortably stealing what does not belong to them. This has manifested itself in endemic corruption that threatens to ruin our country.

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Each of the music we listen to is by law, someone’s property. In several countries in the world, this property has been aggregated to form huge industries providing livelihood to many.

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There was a time when Nigeria hosted some of the biggest recording companies in the world: EMI, Polygram, Sony Music, Decca, CBS, etc. Each of these companies left the country because of the intolerable level of piracy resulting in many of our citizens losing their livelihood. From the piracy of vinyl records for which Alaba and similar markets were notorious, to the piracy of music cassettes, to the piracy of CDs and DVDs, to off-line piracy and in this digital age, to online piracy,Nigeria has unfortunately always led the way.

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This sordid culture and penchant for reaping where we did not sow, has exposed Nigeria to the free-for-all looting of our national resources, which has left us with millions of hungry and desperate citizens suffering in the midst of plenty. This sordid culture of quick money-making at all cost has manifested itself in the massive banditry and kidnapping across Nigeria that now threatens the security of each and every one of us. The crass injustice in our land has forced millions of Nigerians to lose faith in the future of our country.

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Sad as it may sound, many have concluded that there is no hope for Nigeria. Some even say that there must be something wrong with our genes.

I refuse.Nothing is wrong with our genes. While our politicians and so-called leaders, with their take-everything and give-nothing-in-return mentality, have left millions of Nigerians with devastating hunger, joblessness and unknown gunmen everywhere, several young Nigerians are flexing their muscles in different parts of the world and soaring in diverse fields.

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I wish to remind you that Asake, Burna Boy, Davido, Tiwa Savage, Tems, Flavour and many more are taking what is today called Afro Beats to the world and filling huge venues with rapturous fans paying pounds and dollars to see them.

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One of the biggest football teams in the world, the English Premiership team, Arsenal has in their team four great footballers all with Nigerian blood: Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze, Noni Maduekeand Ethan Nwaneri.

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Everywhere in the world, Nigerians are doing great things. Our problem is with our so-called leaders and their cohorts, who get to power by corrupting our electoral system, get into office to steal everything their eyes can see.

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They go ahead to deploy the institutions and agencies of state as personal tools to enrich themselves, harass and do manifest injustice to others. When they lose powerand they are caught, they run and hide, and cover themselves under the duvet of tribalism. They then use all kinds of manipulations to corrupt and weaken the judicial system and deceive themselves that they have escaped justice forever.

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Please, let me be clear: the rampant infringement of the intellectual property rights of songwriters, composers, performers, music publishers, record labels and other stakeholders in Nigeria’s creative industry does not stand on its own. It is not isolated. It is part of the national malaise and penchant for reaping where we did not sow.

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Trust me, if we must bring about the end of the malignant infringement of copyright which has now moved from Alaba market to the internet, and threatens our creative industry, we must attack the problem from its roots.

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Yes, we must uproot what has become a sordid national culture of corruption and flagrant disrespect of the people in power for the rule of law.

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A few weeks ago, the Board of COSON which I chair, issued a statement asking the Government of Cross River State to obey the Orders of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal and pay the debt of 500 million Naira awarded to COSON against the state government since 2018.

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Observed the Board, “the Cross River State Government is displaying the kind of recklessness and lawlessness a democratically elected government should never contemplate. We are not asking Governor Bassey Otu for a gift or a grant. We are asking him to obey court orders. We have followed due process. He is not above the law and has a duty to obey the Orders of two of Nigeria’s most prominent courts, the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal.

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On Monday, May 14, 2018, in Calabar, the Federal High Court delivered a 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.

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The judgment redefined the place of creativity in Nigeria and said it clearly that no one is above the law, including our governments, and no one has the right to publicly deploy the intellectual property of free citizens without authorization. The judgment is a huge victory for every creative person in Nigeria.

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We spent about ten years in court seeking and obtaining the historic judgments. It is now more than two years since the Court of Appeal decision. Those close to Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River State should tell the governor that it is not weakness to obey court orders. It is his duty to uphold the rule of law and that all the investment in the judiciary in his state will mean nothing if his legacy is the disobedience of court orders. Someone should remind him that he will not be governor forever. A day will come when his well being may depend on the obedience of the order of a court.

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I say to my friends and colleagues in the creative industry that we can no longer hide our heads in the sand and pretend that the battle to wipe out corruption and lawlessness in Nigeria, and to enthrone good governance, does not concern us.

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If we have accepted to live with the rot that we see everywhere in Nigeria, we must ask ourselves if it is in this rot that we want our children and grandchildren to grow up.

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So, today, on this “No Music Day” I repeat my call on everyone in the Nigerian creative family to become generals and foot soldiers in the battle to rid Nigeria of the rot of corruption and bad leadership. We must deploy our voices, our writings, our movies, skits and drama to lead the war so that when the story is told it would be clear that we did not run from our responsibilities. 

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Let me state again that if we are coming to justice, we must come with clean hands. If we are going to fight corruption and lawlessness, we must be sure that we are not corrupt and lawless ourselves. If we are fighting bad leadership, we have to be absolutely sure that we are not providing bad leadership ourselves. In other words, we must practice what we preach.

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So, I call on all the organizations in the creative industry to show good examples in the way we operate. I repeat that our organizations must betransparent and accountable. I state that no one should assume the leadership of any of our creative industry organizations without an open and clear mandate of the members from a free and fair elections. In each of our organizations, the abiding object must be to uphold and fight for the interest of our members and not the hijacking of the instruments of the organization for the enrichment of the leaders.

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As we deploy our voices, our writings, our movies, skits and drama to lead the war against corruption, lawlessness and bad leadership in Nigeria, we must expose injustice wherever we find it.

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Anywhere we see anyone manipulating and corrupting our electoral system, we must expose it, knowing that anyone who will steal an election, will steal everything else his eyes can see.

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Anywhere we find any of our countrymen engaging in any of those fraudulent activities that deface the image of our country, we must expose it, knowing that we all pay a price when we cannot travel around the world with our heads held high.

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On this “No Music Day”, I restate the determination of COSON to remain a transparent and law-abiding agent of strength, unity, progress and growth for the creative industry in Nigeria with the determination to shield the Nigerian music industry from scammers and marauders who work day and night to turn collective management of copyright into their personal cash cow and naira gushing ATM.

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On this “No Music Day” 2025, I repeat my call on the creatives of Nigeria to bind together and work together for the good of all and to resist those who work day and night to divide us so that they can feast on that division.

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As we fight the battle for the soul of Nigeria, at home, Nigerian creatives must continue to conquer territories and soar in every part of the world. Nigerian musicians must continue to pack venues, big and small across the world. Nigerian movies must be dominant everywhere we go. Nigerian fashion must be the toast of people in every part of the world. Nigerian sportsmen must conquer in every field, on every track, every court and every ring. Nigerian content must be the reference point on every platform.

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Yes, I very much recognize the deep despair in the land, the hunger that threatens the life of millions of Nigerians, the insecurity that has snatched the lives of so many of our countrymen and the anguish under which many Nigerians wake up in the morning and go to bed at night.

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Nigerian creatives cannot afford to give up on Nigeria. We must work together for the unity of our country and the progress of our nation.We have again begun to witness the dangerous re-introduction and promotion of very treacherous tribal and ethnic divisions and hate, some of the reasons that incubated the past civil war which brought horror to manyof our countrymen and sent millions of our citizens to their death. We must not let this happen again to Nigeria. I call on Nigerian creatives to call out any person engaged in brewing this treacherous liquor of intolerance and hate.

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We must contribute to making Nigeria a nation in which our people, from the East, West, North and South,appreciate that our different languages do not mean different destinies.We must ensure that we use our music, our movies and skits; our literature, postings and the contents we publish, not to create suspicion and distrust but let our people know that though we might practice different religions, we worship the same God.

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On this “No Music Day 2025”, I pray for all Nigerians who are going through trials, tribulations and hardship and beg the Almighty to please meet their needs. God bless the Nigerian Creative Industry and God bless the great people of Nigeria.

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CHIEF TONY OKOROJI:

September 1, 2025