SPECIAL REPORT: Unionism can resolve Nigeria’s artiste-label feuds but apathy abounds

He will be buried twice. Police say he died of injuries sustained during a post-concert altercation with his industry colleague Primeboy in Ikorodu. What used to be a musician of great talent now lies stone-dead in the morgue after being exhumed and cut open for a state-sanctioned autopsy. 

Mohbad was vocal about the conflict that led to his tumultuous 2022 exit from Marlian Records, a label run by the street-hop star Naira Marley whose past brushes with law enforcement had dealt them all a fatal brand blow.

The singer, aged 27 when he died on the 12th of September 2023 following an injection by an unlicensed nurse, had gone public in October 2022 with allegations of assault against his label boss. He claimed Naira Marley had ordered thugs to beat him up for seeking to employ a non-label manager to handle his music business affairs.

In a panicky video of himself running across the street late at night, Mohbad asked the public to hold his former boss responsible if he somehow ended up dead. And his death indeed happened, only one year after he exited the label.

A petition dated June 27 surfaced showing that the now-deceased singer had alleged assault and threat to life from Samson Balogun, a promoter known to be an associate of Marley’s. In the police report, he narrated how 15 men had come to the location of his music video shoot on June 25 with guns and machetes to disrupt production.

His management would also, much later, reveal that the artiste was already in court to retrieve the majority of his songs and unpaid royalties which they claimed were wrongfully withheld by Marlian Music before Mohbad’s death.

Police say there is evidence linking Naira Marley and Balogun with cyberbullying, physical abuse, a threat to life, and assault against Mohbad. Arrests have been made and the unlicensed nurse is being considered the prime suspect, but it remains to be established how much the singer’s overt industry strife had to do with his death.

Exit-related dispute between music artists and record labels is a global industry trend and Nigeria is not exactly left out, adding to a barrage of other issues that fuel acrimony and self-help confrontations among local industry executives. Major names in Nigerian music have had a share of such altercations over the last decade, including Wizkid, Brymo, Runtown, and Peruzzi, the details of which often don’t spill into the public or mainstream press.

Unionism is one solution, but there’s pervasive apathy

Between the Music Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN), the Music Publishers Association of Nigeria (MPAN), the Record Label Proprietors Initiative (RELPI), the Association of Music Artist Managers of Nigeria (AMAMN), and the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN), Nigerian music has guilds and one major trade union that embodies a legal team meant to intervene in related industry conflicts before they even make it to court.

But these groups, when probed for their waning influence in the scheme of contemporary challenges, point to an overbearing inclusivity problem and the prevailing apathy that younger musicians have for industry unionism.

PMAN for instance, its president Pretty Okafor confirms, has a cumulative membership of 1.6 million with a corporate building, a digital library, and a radio station to its name. “If all or most of the relevant stakeholders were to join the trade union as supposed, we should be looking at a membership of about eight million,” he states.

This, the music executive explains, would mean that the union’s ability to enforce best practices in the industry, influence contractual relationships, or intervene in matters involving non-members is largely whittled down.

Disputes in the music industry are mostly hinged on claims of contract breach, transparency concerns among labels, or rights infringement. Artistes say they’re exploited by labels through their record deals in various ways, including unfair contracts, inadequate compensation, and limited creative control. The absence of industry-specific regulations that set guidelines for fair contracts and revenue sharing makes the ecosystem a free-for-all market.

Artistes themselves, who often lack music business knowledge, are faulted over their penchant for abandoning validly subsisting contractual agreements with their record labels, further deepening acrimony in the industry.

The global music industry is highly decentralised; Nigeria’s especially is underregulated, with no entry barriers existing to halt new talents or mould new players into conformity with predefined professional standards.

Compounding this is the subsisting discourse on the proceeds of illegal enterprises being funnelled into music production in Nigeria. On this, entertainment lawyer Foza Fawehinmi tells Aljazeera’s Pelumi Salako that these financiers have frequently become combative, resorting to criminal tactics to recoup their music investments.

The absence of a legal framework to institutionalise minimum entry requirements for players in the industry, including musicians and labels, doesn’t help with discouraging mediocrity in the ecosystem, making for another source of rancour that has often pitted Nigerian artistes against record executives in claims of contract breach.

Trade unions as internal dispute resolution mechanism

Typical music industry disputes like breach of contract and rights infringement could be arbitrated, where the outcome of the process is binding on both parties. There is also the option of mediation where the warring parties commit to resolving their differences in a settlement conference to be overseen by a qualified legal practitioner.

Many disputes in Nigerian music opt for these instead of litigation, which can be notoriously unpredictable and expensive, where cases often drag on for years in court after which the losing side can still appeal their outcome.

But stakeholders at an AFRIMA music business summit, which was held on October 1, said such disputes would not have needed intervention from the courts or police if trade unions and guilds functioned as they were meant to.

Justin Ige, a board member at the MPAN, said stronger unions with an internal dispute resolution mechanism and standardised contract terms will ensure that stakeholders act in the interest of the industry. “Mohbad’s case is a failure of policing. But if a union like PMAN reported to the police with him, his death could have been prevented.”

It is normal for trade unions in global creative sectors to weaponise their influence and numbers in mediating or negotiating contract terms on behalf of practitioners, forming special associations that cater to the unique needs and challenges of musicians, producers, engineers, and other professionals to prevent compensation disputes.

Okafor, while extending his condolences, says the Mohbad case is partly because both parties ignored traditional industry structure, making it difficult for executives to intervene in their case. “If Mohbad was a PMAN member, it would have been our problem. If Naira Marley’s record label is registered with PMAN, we would shut the erring party down and bring them all to the table. We would’ve called the managers. But they all ignored the structure with flimsy excuses that PMAN is after money. And we’re not a CMO. We don’t collect royalties or broker deals.”

It was in 1991 that Okafor was in conflict with Storm Records over unpaid royalties for the Pretty and Junior duo. “We wanted to involve the police but our manager said it would only be effective if we reported to the union.”  He said this also played out with Polygram, a label he said kept his music duo locked in an unpaid 10-year contract.

Authorized by the government under the Trade Unions Act, PMAN has the responsibility to regulate the practice of the music profession in Nigeria, with some sub-guilds answerable to it. Structural inadequacies and a years-long legitimacy struggle in court between two local royalty-collecting societies would put traditional institutions and groups for the industry in a negative light, creating a major trust deficit that momentarily took a toll on PMAN.

“Because of what has happened to PMAN before, it seems nobody believes the structure can still work, forgetting that PMAN is the only trade union not just in the music industry but in the whole creative sector,” Okafor notes.

The executive says the union’s effort to get music guilds like label owners, promoters, publishers, managers, and showbiz entrepreneurs on board after PMAN bounced back over the last five to six years was met with repulsion.

“They saw us like a group of failed musicians seeking relevance in traditional unions,” Okafor added. “It was a collective move. They rejected PMAN because they didn’t want anyone having authority over their activities.”

Towards preserving Africa’s largest music industry

Nigerian music acts became more prominent in the global industry after the accelerated evolution of Afrobeats in the 2000s which only intensified in the 2010s. Music producer Laolu Atkins argues that multiple players entered the scene within a short period, rendering existing regulatory structures in the industry ineffective. “We were not prepared for the deluge of prominence that came with it and the impact that music from here is making,” he said.

Nigeria’s music is receiving even more global acceptance evidenced by the strides of local talents at international awards and the growing taste of multinational music companies for Nigerian acts. However, the local industry lacks the structure that would guarantee economic gains, sustainability, and value retention on the home front.

“We have the biggest music industry in Africa and a genre taking over the world. But we’re losing it,” Okafor says.

In 2017 and 2018, Okafor pushed for a bill to make PMAN a statutory authority in enforcing music business best practices and also make it mandatory for intending industry practitioners to seek membership. The music executive says label owners, instead, worked against PMAN on the floor of the national assembly to throw out the legislation.

More stakeholders in Nigerian music say the lack of synergy among industry players and sectoral bodies on these relevant policies leaves all parties working at cross-purposes. Mike Dada, president of AFRIMA, says building alliances between stakeholders in Nigerian music remains critical. He points out the need to upturn the negative stereotypes haunting professional guilds and create an umbrella body for the various sectoral groups operating within the music industry in Nigeria which he says can then function as a collective dispute-resolution mechanism.

A public-private partnership on regulatory presence or an intra-industry regulatory agency, he adds, can sanitise the ecosystem alongside well-crafted industry-specific laws and regulations that can provide a stable foundation to attract increased investment in Nigeria’s music business and protect the rights of artists, creators, and labels.