Elegant stallion, Onyeka Onwenu, who embraced Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) publicly, 11 years ago, has just turned her back to them as she moved to pitch her tent with the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN), causing a stare and tongues wagging over such titillating action.
The well agitated oldest and living Nigerian pop queen on Nigerian beats, scene blew her top over what she sees as “the showering of the mismanagement of musicians funds in a disturbing manner, which undoubtedly forced me to change camp inevitably.”
The celebrated act who still looks good, said that she would have come on board MSCN earlier, if not that she wanted to see possible and positive change of things within the hierarchy of COSON.
“I am happy to be here at last. MCSN is a home. I should have been here earlier on, but I felt we could put things together positively in COSON. But when it dawned on me that I was dead wrong because in a situation where one man thinks he knows it all, the result is the mess in which COSON finds itself now,” she asserted this at the MSCN headquarters Lagos, during a well peopled press gathering.
To her, COSON is dead as a collective society, insisting that it has no approval to operate as a collective society.
According to the elegant stallion, “any cooperate body or organisation that pays money to them for the use of music does so at his own risk because musicians will come after COSON for their monies.”
The seriously vexed singer stunned the house when she recalled that since “I joined COSON 11 years ago, I am yet to receive a dime, coupled with the mismanagement of musicians funds by the society which forced me out.”
Mrs Onwuenu observed that the happenings at COSON, confirmed tacitly that it has been a one-man show all the while.
“How can one person award contracts single-handedly to a company fronting for him over the year? Who does that in any civilised setting without being checked by anybody? Hence I rose against this after watching carefully and also being disturbed over the happenings. Infact, four cases were instituted by COSON against me, forcing me to spend my personally income,” she recalled bitterly.
She described the Chairman of MCSN, Orits Wiliki and Mayo Ayilaran as two extra ordinary people, who have been fighting copyright issues over decades. “Without them fighting on behalf of the MSCN, it would have been a one-man show like in the case of COSON where one man lords it over others unjustifiably,” the songstress maintained.