Director General, DG, of NCC, Afam Ezekude, who said this at a training programme on digital/internet piracy, regretted that the nation’s economy was being depleted daily by piracy and copyright infringements.
Noting the trend as a major problem confronting the nation, Ezekude revealed that the commission had entered into a partnership with Google to fight cyber crime which, according to him, is depleting the nation’s economy.
He said: “The partnership with Google is something we thought about in the last one year and we have reached out to Google with a view to partnering with them, as we begin to look into the issue of addressing internet piracy.
“Who best can provide us with useful guidance and tapes if not Google who are the biggest internet source engine? That is why we approached them and we are now fully on board and obviously that would help us to address infringement of Nigerian creative works on the internet.
“No one seems to care about what happens when Nigerian creative works are infringed on the internet with impunity. And we as a Commission are bent on addressing that issue. And Google are very useful partner in that regard.
“The Nigerian economy loses billions of dollars annually to piracy. We have a very large market in this country. And that reflects in the amount of loss that we incurred through, because, if the pirates are allowed to continue to do their illegal activities, the government is loosing tax revenue because the pirates don’t pay tax.
“The unemployment of our people is higher, the economy suffers greatly and I said it is in the range of billions of Dollars, but if we can try and curb it to certain extent, that figure will drop and government will benefit from the tax revenue and our people would obviously become employed.”
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