The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has said that those wailing over the new Company and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) should better stop because there is no going back.

CAC said the new act has come to stay in the country despite the public outcry that has greeted it.

The Commission said it was only waiting for the legislature to gazette it for immediate implementation of the law.

The CAMA bill was recently signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, and was included in his list of achievements for the last one year.

The CAC Registrar-General, Alhaji Garba Abubakar, while speaking to Commerce Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CICAN) in Abuja yesterday wondered why the act was being opposed by religious bodies, especially the churches.

“They must henceforth subject their finances and expenditures for proper auditing, and copies sent to us at the CAC,” he said.

He explained further, “The new legal framework applies to all organizations registered with us; be it a religious organisation, NGO or CSO.

“Remember that they also have constitutions guiding them. The criteria to be a trustee of registered organisations are clearly spelt out in the laws establishing them.

“How is it that a registered member who qualifies to be a trustee in an organisation would not want government to know how the organisation is run? What are the responsibilities of the trustees?

“What are the responsibilities of the governing council or the board? How do you manage the affairs of the organisation? How do you use or expend the income and properties of the organisation? How do you appoint members of the governing board? These are the issues the new CAMA has come to address.”

Recall, that the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN), had recently described CAMA as satanic, demanding that the President halts the implementation of “the obnoxious and ungodly law until religious institutions are exempted from it.

How CAN rejected CAMA

The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, and President of Evangelical Church Winning All, ECWA, Rev. Stephen Panya Baba, in line with the stand of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, have outrightly rejected CAMA which according to the FG is supposed to be gazetted and begin by October.

The umbrella body of Christians in Nigeria had cautioned that the implementation of the law as it presently constituted is an invitation to trouble that the government does not have the power to manage.

RCCG Pastor Enoch Adeboye

“The stand of the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the leadership of the church on issues like this is not always different from whatever the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN. “We always align ourselves with whatever the stand of the leadership of CAN and PFN on issues like this. The Redeemed Christian Church of God does not take any decision that is at variance with the stand of CAN and PFN and the same thing applies concerning this very issue.

ECWA President, Rev. Stephen Panya Baba

“We are not happy and we urge the Federal Government to do the needful to revert this obnoxious law which is totally unacceptable,” he said, commending the prompt action of CAN leadership in condemning the law which has variously been condemned by several church organizations and human rights groups.

FG, CAN, Churches bicker over new CAMA

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