The Director-General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, Dr John Asein, used a courtesy visit from MultiChoice Nigeria CEO Kemi Omotosho to lay out the gaps he wants the broadcaster to help close: unclear licensing rules for commercial premises, a weak framework governing the rights of broadcasters and collective management organisations, and a growing threat from illegal IPTV services and unauthorised streaming platforms. The meeting was the first between Asein and Omotosho since her recent appointment.
Asein congratulated Omotosho and framed the meeting as an opportunity to deepen strategic collaboration on issues shaping Nigeria’s creative economy. He acknowledged MultiChoice’s contributions to broadcasting infrastructure, local content promotion, and the international visibility of Nigerian creative works, but signalled that compliance and clearer legal frameworks are central to the next phase of the relationship.
The most pointed issue raised was the inconsistent treatment by courts of subscription broadcast services used in hotels and commercial spaces. Courts have reached conflicting conclusions on whether such use constitutes a private or public performance, creating market uncertainty and complicating revenue collection for rights holders. Asein called for clearer licensing guidelines and stronger regulatory backing to resolve this ambiguity.
He also flagged the need for stronger frameworks defining the rights and responsibilities of broadcasters and collective management organisations, noting that the rapid digitalisation of the Nigerian media landscape has outpaced the legal structures designed to govern it. On digital piracy, Asein raised the specific threats of illegal IPTV services, unauthorised streaming platforms, and the redistribution of broadcast signals without authorisation, all of which reduce the economic returns available to producers, creators, and legitimate distributors.
Nigeria’s creative economy is among the fastest-growing on the continent. Nollywood is the world’s second most prolific film industry by output, and the music sector generates hundreds of millions of dollars in streaming revenue annually. MultiChoice, through its DStv and GOtv platforms, remains the dominant pay-TV distributor in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa, making the relationship between the commission and the company a bellwether for how copyright law is enforced in practice.
Bigger Picture: The conversation between the Nigerian Copyright Commission and MultiChoice reflects a structural tension running through every high-growth creative economy: the faster content markets expand, the further legal frameworks lag behind actual commercial practice. Nigeria’s courts are still settling basic questions, such as whether a hotel showing DStv in its lobby owes a separate public performance fee, that mature content markets resolved decades ago. Asein’s agenda, taken together, amounts to a demand that the legal infrastructure catch up with the scale of Nigerian creative output. MultiChoice’s cooperation matters not just for compliance but for establishing the precedents that will govern how content value is shared as Nigeria’s creator economy scales into streaming and digital distribution.
Source: Broadcast Media Africa
