PCO: Good afternoon, Ma and welcome to the Nigerian Copyright Commission. Can we get to know Dr. Liz Iheanacho?

Dr. Iheanacho: I am a proud creative, spirit soul and body, I just retired from the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) a year ago as Director for Research and Documentation. My relationship with the NCC dates back to when the Commission was part of the Ministry of Information and Culture before the exit to Ministry of Justice.

I am an award-winning writer for children’s books about to publish my first adult literature being my fifth book. I dabbled into corporate journalism while I was the Editor of the NCAC News, which afforded me the opportunity to interact with sister agencies to promote their activities and form synergies on activities to ensure less competition and more cooperation.

Upon retirement, I got into the promotion of indigenous African fabrics which is another area of creativity. This became very necessary because most of the entrepreneurs, creators and indigenous owners of traditional fabric designs are not literate which makes them vulnerable to textile marauders. This is something very serious happening in the fabric industry for now. The Adire in particular, has become so bastardised with the mass produced, print produced and machine produced Adire, competing for the same market, purse and limited resources. Because of these, our traditional knowledge is being impinged upon and traditional designers are losing their own domain and this is a reality that has to be confronted.

Courtesy of the NCC recently, I was appointed as a consultant to WIPO on indigenous fabrics. We have been engaging and talking to SMEs who have produced as designers and frontline technicians. On the WIPO intervention in the clusters, I happen to be in the Batik and Adire cluster, where we talk to the indigenous knowledge owners about why they need to consciously register their imprint as part of their Intellectual Property (IP). I am an NCC Ambassador with WIPO. The first phase of the intervention has just been concluded and the response is awesome. I really appreciate what the DG NCC, Dr. Asein, is doing because sometimes you need to let the people understand that IP is not what happens in sophisticated environment. Creatives need to know that it is not enough to let people know you are a creative but what are you doing to protect your creativity? The days of ignorance are over.

As a writer, I come into my creative space knowing that I am protected, the copyright law protects me, I am paid for my creativity through royalties. If you use my work in the academic world without acknowledging me (plagiarism), it has its penalty but what happens when people are not informed that their designs can be stolen and the commercial benefits due to them goes to someone else with impunity. It means you are perpetually impoverished because your IP awareness is limited and you do not want to take advantage of it. This is the time to address all of that judging from the fact that they are seeing the consequences.

Remember, we are also talking to a generation that is enlightened, so there is need to keep pushing so that they might leverage what is available to protect their creativity. I talk to people from the business angle of IP because if you know your rights and cannot translate it into your products, you will be challenged. It is a synergy as the IP experts in law do their beat and business experts like me also contribute at the African Weaving Festival (AWeF) which the NCC supported for me last year.

At AWef, we promote indigenous fabrics of Africa no matter the type. Our underlining message at AWef is to turn the fabrics into other things like interior decorative items like duvet, blankets, puffs and so forth. We need to start commercialising our indigenous fabric otherwise strangers will come in and take it away. In countries with sophisticated technology for their textile industry, the handcrafted product is more expensive.
Looking at the textile industry specifically, you cannot open your borders to importation of all sorts of fabrics and expect that the small producers will compete with the big players.

Secondly, the more we import, the more we keep enriching the average fabric producing family abroad. What do your people produce and how proud are you about it? Some of our leaders like Olusegun Obasanjo, Maryam Babangida and Charles Soludo have already taken the lead to promote indigenous fabrics like Ankara, Adire and Akwete. Leaders however need to go further to ensure that awareness on the use of indigenous fabric is institutionalized through the instrumentality of their offices.

PCO: As a creative and a friend of the NCC, how would you rate the Commission in view of the strides made so far?

Dr. Liz: I have been involved with the NCC for a very long time. Initially it was difficult for people to relate with what the Commission stood for, the copyright thing was such an abstract thing as people could not relate with what it has to do with culture when the NCC was under the Ministry of Information and Culture. In recent times, the DG NCC, Dr. Asein has put the whole idea of IP in the heart of creativity.

The Commission’s celebration of Prof. Wole Soyinka at 90 , speaks volume. Soyinka is at the forefront of pushing Africa’s identity and our own intellectual quotient to the world. I also realised that the National Council for Arts and Culture is also beginning to talk about protecting the intellectual rights of creatives. Copyright and IP is beginning to make a lot of sense, it is no longer a remote abstract thing. I am now mediating between those who are larger bodies in the business of producing textiles and training them on how they can mainstream their own identity into their product.

Kudos to the DG and the NCC, most people now realise that they have a stake in the copyright issue in Nigeria. For creatives, before you produce, you need to sit down to know what you are expecting out of the products and how you are going to protect that product so that your dreams and desires do not die midway when another person walks in and steal your works.

The NCC is doing great and I am really glad that I am a part of your success story so that together we can go very high and better to let people realise that every single thing that they create deserves to be protected.

Thank you.