Bills that tend to protect intellectual properties and Maritime Industry against the activities of pirates will soon be forwarded to the National Assembly for necessary actions.
This followed the approvals on Thursday, by the Federal Executive Council, (FEC) after its two days marathon meeting to forward bills on the issues to the National Assembly after years of fine tuning.
Recalls that both bills which were first proposed under the previous administration had been under preparation and finally received the blessing of FEC at its second day consecutive meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari as the last FEC meeting of the year, 2017.
The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami gave the hint while briefing State House Correspondents after the marathon meeting in Abuja at the Presidential Villa, on Thursday.
According to Malami, Federal Ministry of Justice had presented the two memos for consideration and approval to FEC which promptly granted the approval after due consideration.
” The Copyright Bill is intended to be transmitted by the executive to the legislature for passage it into law. It is a Bill that relates to creative industry, it is designed to accord protection of creative works against piracy and protection of intellectual property rights”
FEC also approved the suppression of piracy and maritime offenses act, which is intended to accord protection to the maritime industry against pirates and indeed.
He noted that the bill will come up with a comprehensive policy provisions intended to ensure that at the end of the day, the spirit of international conventions that have been ratified by Nigeria over time relating to maritime industry are indeed accommodated into the bill with a view to bring it in line with the international best practices and indeed ensure the protection of our maritime boundary.
“The same bill as processed by the office of the Attorney General has accordingly been approved by the Council and the Attorney General of the Federation is equally instructed to transmit same to National Assembly for passage and eventual assent by the President of it is eventually passed into law by the National Assembly”
The Environment Ministry also presented the National Bio-Safty Management Agency policy, to the Council for approval.
The agency under the Ministry of Environment is charged with the direct responsibility of monitoring and supervising the use of genetically modified organism in the country.
The national biosafety under the environment ministry is a regulatory agency with the responsibility of checking the type of fuel that are genetically modified product that could come into the country to ensure that they are safe for consumption either for animals or humans and to ensure also that they do not displace our traditional products that are found locally in the country.
The agency will check amongst other things, the hydrocarbon remediation project which is in River State where approval was given for the engagement of the project management consultants as well as monitoring and evaluation to ensure that proper framework is put in place that will assist in supervising and actualising the clean up and that was also approved earlier.
Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, Audu Ogbe also presented a memo on Veterinary Council of Nigeria to improve regulations on Veterinary practice in Nigeria.
The new policy will ensure that it improve regulations on veterinary practice so that people not qualified to practice as Veterinary Doctors do not operate in the country.
The regulations were made and submitted to Council and Council approved them for Mr President to endorse so that those regulations can be put in practice with the protection of livestock and the improvement of the breed of livestock in the country.
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
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