The Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) has condemned the amended Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) recently signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Damning some provisions tied to the amended Act, the Executive Director of CHRICED, Dr Ibrahim Zikirullahi, alleged that the federal government had turned its lawmaking function into a sinister conspiracy against citizens.

The group, as gathered by Development Diaries, especially condemned Section 839 of the amended act, which empowers the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to take over and manage non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on allegations of misconduct.

‘The opaque, nocturnal and non-inclusive manner in which the amendments in the CAMA were effected, without recourse to exhaustive consultations, through a public hearing and robust debates involving citizens, robs those horrible provisions of their legitimacy’, Zikirullahi noted in a statement.

Section 842 of the law, which empowers CAC to dissolve associations ‘for an unsatisfactory response to CAC request for evidence of activities over dormant accounts’, was also condemned for empowering the CAC without recourse to judicial processes.

CHRICED accused the government of targeting ‘the critical voices and organisations amplifying citizens demands for transparency, accountability and good’.

‘It is an irony that a government which has not been able to summon the political will to dissolve national challenges such as chronic insecurity, employment, lack of quality health services, dilapidated national infrastructure and extreme poverty, is so eager to dissolve associations formed by citizens’, the statement read.

Meanwhile, the Registrar-General of CAC, Garba Abubakar, said registered entities had nothing to fear as long as they operate within laid down regulations.

Additionally, the CAC boss, while speaking at a two-day retreat of the Commerce and Industry Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CICAN) in Abuja, said that, contrary to insinuations, the new regulations were designed to improve Nigeria’s ranking in the World Bank’s ease of doing business ranking as well as reduce the cost of doing business in the country.

Source: Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education