A Lagos Court Froze N1.2 Billion Meant for Nigeria’s Copyright Levy in February 2026. No Source Has Reported Who Wins It.

On 9 February 2026, a Federal High Court judge in Lagos froze N1,205,956,580.20 in copyright-levy money that Nigeria’s government had just paid out for the first time in the levy’s history. The money sat with the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN), the country’s oldest collecting society. Eleven record labels and music companies, acting through a trade body called the Record Label Proprietors’ Initiative (ReLPI), told the court MCSN had no right to touch a share of it. Seven months later, no source read for this piece reports who the court has decided is right.

What the money actually is

Nigeria’s Copyright Act has allowed for a levy on blank media and recording devices since 1988, a mechanism to compensate rights owners for private copying. It was never implemented until the Copyright Act 2022 revived it under Section 89. In early February 2026, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) released the first tranche, which MCSN itself announced as N1,205,956,580.20, collected on imported blank CDs, flash drives and similar devices and intended, in MCSN’s own framing, to lift Nigerian musicians out of poverty.

The NCC paid that tranche to MCSN in full. That single decision is the entire dispute. MCSN has operated since 1984 primarily as the collecting society for musical works, the compositions written by songwriters and composers. Sound recordings, the finished master recordings that labels invest in and own, are a separate right under Nigerian law, and the labels say a different body altogether should be collecting on their behalf.

The freeze, not a ruling

Represented by lawyer Oragwu Nnamdi, ReLPI and eleven named labels and companies, Mavin Records, Davido Music Worldwide, Premier Music Publishing (Leadership) or Premier Records (Vanguard, sources differ on the exact name), Chocolate City Music, Hypertek Digital, Digital Music Commerce & Exchange (DMCE), Beggars Group Media, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment Africa, Warner Music South Africa and Gamma Media Middle East DMCC, filed an ex parte application on 5 February 2026 in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/207/2026. An affidavit sworn by ReLPI’s national coordinator, Chinedu Chukwuji, argued that the labels had formally opted out of MCSN’s collective management, that MCSN’s own constitution confines it to musical works, and that once levy money reached MCSN and mixed with other funds it would be “practically impossible to trace or recover the portion due to the record labels.”

Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa granted the order. Premium Times reported it examined a certified true copy and dated the grant to 9 February; Pulse Nigeria and Businessday both date the same order to 18 February. This piece could not resolve which date is correct and flags both. What is not in dispute across every account read is the substance: the Central Bank of Nigeria and twenty named commercial banks, including Access, GTB, Zenith, UBA, First Bank, Stanbic IBTC and Standard Chartered among others, were barred from releasing, transferring or honouring any instruction touching the levy funds, and given three days to file affidavits disclosing the sums standing to MCSN’s credit. MCSN itself was ordered to preserve intact any funds tied to sound recordings owned by the labels, to render an account of them, and to stop dealing with them. The matter was adjourned to 12 March 2026, for MCSN to be heard on a motion on notice, since the original order was granted without MCSN present in court.

None of that is a finding that the labels are entitled to the money. A Mareva injunction of this kind exists to stop funds disappearing while a court works out who is owed what. It answers a question of custody, not ownership.

MCSN’s answer

MCSN did not accept the framing quietly. In a statement carried by Vanguard on 7 February, before the freeze, the society said sound-recording rights in Nigeria are shared 50-50 between producers and performers under an agreement with the Performing Employers’ Association of Nigeria, and that most Nigerian performers are its direct members, not ReLPI’s. It described the labels opposing it, which it listed as nine entities rather than the eleven named in the court filing, as “mostly foreign-interest dominated” companies “operating under various guises confusing the copyright system” for “more than 30 years.” MCSN’s own website states it is “the only Collective Management Organization approved by the Nigerian Copyright Commission to license, monitor, and distribute royalties for Musical Works and Sound Recordings in Nigeria,” a claim that squarely contradicts ReLPI’s central legal argument that MCSN’s mandate excludes sound recordings.

After the freeze, MCSN moved to have it vacated on procedural grounds. Its communications manager, Halim Mohammed, told THISDAY the order “was obtained via an ex parte motion, which means we were not put on notice. We therefore have a right to seek redress,” while characterising the standoff as ordinary business friction: “As a corporate body, disagreements are bound to occur between partners in the course of doing business, and parties may decide to seek the intervention of the courts.”

What is not established

No source read for this piece reports what happened at or after the 12 March 2026 hearing. A Q1 2026 legal digest, published in April, confirms only that MCSN had filed to vacate the order and that the underlying disagreement was unresolved; it predates any outcome. Repeated searches through early September 2026 turned up no report that the injunction was vacated, upheld, discharged or replaced by a substantive ruling, and no report of the funds being released to either side. Whether MCSN has been able to access any part of the N1.2 billion since March, whether the labels have recovered anything, and how the court has interpreted Section 89(3) of the Copyright Act, the provision at the centre of the case, could not be established from public reporting.

Sources also disagree on secondary details that do not affect the core facts but are worth flagging: the exact name of the third-listed plaintiff appears as both “Premier Music Publishing Limited” and “Premier Records,” and MCSN’s own count of opposing labels (nine) does not match the eleven named in court filings. Separately, the Performers Employers’ Association of Nigeria wrote to Nigeria’s Attorney-General alleging it was excluded from a 19 February 2026 government meeting on the levy’s disbursement framework, a claim outside the scope of what this record verifies but relevant to anyone tracking the same dispute.

What this means for artists

This case is not about who owns a master recording. It is about a much more basic and, for working musicians, more consequential question: which organisation actually gets paid first when Nigeria’s government collects money on behalf of the music industry, and how much of that money ever reaches a performer or producer rather than sitting in institutional accounts while lawyers argue. MCSN frames itself as the vehicle built to get levy money to individual creators, including performers who are not signed to any of the eleven litigating labels. ReLPI frames the same money as royalties its member labels are owed directly as owners of the sound recordings the levy is meant to compensate, arguing collective management by a body that cannot verify individual ownership risks losing track of who is owed what entirely.

Both cannot be fully right, and the Copyright Act 2022’s text on who administers levy income for sound recordings, as opposed to musical works, is the exact question the Federal High Court has not yet answered in public. Until it does, any Nigerian artist relying on this levy as a new income stream is watching roughly N1.2 billion sit frozen in twenty banks, with no public timetable for when, or to whom, it moves next.