Human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN) and a former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, among others, have attacked the newly passed Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020, saying many of its provisions would allow for gross violation of fundamental human rights.
Falana and Odinkalu argued that the new law gave too much power to the Registrar General of the Corporate Affairs Commission, which can easily be used to arbitrarily clamp down on civil society organisations.
But the RG of CAC, Alhaji Garba Abubakar, speaking through Mr Justine Nidiya, said the new law should be allowed to operate first and given “benefit of the doubt; and if there are challenges we will address them by way of amendments.”
They spoke at a virtual town-hall meeting, with the theme, “CAMA 2020: Regulation or Repression?” co-organised by European Union-ACT; Open Society Initiative for West Africa; Working Group on Civil Society Regulatory Environment; Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project and the CAC.
Falana, in his remarks, faulted Section 389 of the law that empowers the CAC to suspend the Board of Trustees of an organisation in crisis and appoint an interim committee to manage its affairs.
Describing the section as a violation of the rights to freedom of association, Falana argued that the CAC should allow organisations to manage their internal crisis in line with their constitutions.
According to Falana, another offensive provision of the law is Section 842, empowering the CAC to take over the funds in the bank accounts of an organisation in crisis.
The SAN said it was tantamount to “obtaining money by false pretence.”
Falana also condemned Section 831 of the law, which, he said, empowers the RG of the CAC to forcefully merge two organisations.
In his remarks, Odinkalu described Part F of CAMA 2020 as a “mish-mash” of borrowed laws from the United Kingdom, hastily copied without the safeguards in the English law.
