Alex Enumah
A former Director-General of Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), Prof. Adebambo Adewopo, SAN, has said for Nigeria to guarantee sustainable national wealth creation and development, there was the need to speed up the reform of the nation’s Intellectual Property(IP) legal regime for effective IP protection and empowerment of the youth population.
Adewopo stated this on Tuesday in Lagos, at a two-day Intellectual Property Symposium organised as part of activities commemoration the World Intellectual Property Day.
The symposium was organised by the Office of International Computer Hacking and IP (ICPH) with the Bureau for International Narcotics Enforcement and Control, United States Embassy, Abuja.
Adewopo noted that the theme: IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future” was apt and particularly instructive for Nigeria and its vibrant youth population.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria, therefore, called on all stakeholders in the creative industry to rally support for urgent enactment of the Copyright Amendment Bill 2022, which was recently passed by the Senate, awaiting the concurrence of the House of Representatives.
He said, “It is as if WIPO has launched a prognosis into the Nigerian demographic strength and enormous creative force for development as a point of reference.
“Given the current state of affairs, there is assurance that the innovative youths will benefit enormously from a significantly improved IP framework, including enhanced enforcement measures that would not only harness their creativity but also protect their products in both the copyright and innovation space.
“This, for instance, has been well-canvased through the introduction of legal regimes of digital copyright, traditional knowledge (TK), collective trademark, geographical indications (GI), service marks, and utility models, among other IP reform provisions,” he added.
He stressed the need to address those imperatives in developing an up-to-date and effective IP legal and policy infrastructure as part of the national innovation agenda for unlocking the full potential of the present and future generations of the innovative Nigerian youth population.”
He also pointed out that current statistics showed that Nigeria had one of the largest youth populations in the world, considering that they constitute 60 per cent of the Nigerian population of over 200 million.
Therefore, for any nation, he said those demographic data constituted one of the most formidable human assets to harness the transformation of society, adding that knowledge was the fabric of creativity and innovation, which constituted the nation’s greatest national endowment.
