Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has broken his silence on sections of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020 that have been described by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) as “ungodly.”
Osinbajo who spoke virtually at the annual general conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Thursday, asked church leaders expressing rage over the Act to approach the National Assembly and seek an amendment.
President Muhammadu Buhari signed CAMA into law three weeks ago, but sections of the law have thrown up heated debate and controversies among religious leaders in the country.
For instance, CAMA provides that if there’s any misconduct or mismanagement of an organization including faith-based bodies, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) may by order, “suspend trustees of an association (in this case, the church, mosques and other faith-based bodies) and appoint the interim managers to manage the affairs of the association for some given reasons.”
According to the law, which replaced the 1990 CAMA, religious bodies and charity organisations in the country will be regulated by the registrar-general of CAC and a supervising minister.
The Vice President who is also a Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) noted that in a democracy, there is a process in place to address misgivings.
Osinbajo said: “We have a process by which this (CAMA law) can be redressed. Whatever the proposal for amendment may be, whatever the view of the leadership of the church may be, regarding the question of how the trustees, whether they are interim trustees or not, can be put into a proposal that will be brought to the National Assembly for consideration for an amendment to the law, that is the process which is entirely opened and ought to be pursued.
“We are in a democracy and there is a process by which things can be done and that process is the one where you bring forward amendments to the National Assembly and they will do whatever is considered useful in the circumstance”.
Meanwhile, the leadership of CAN and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) have vehemently rejected the law, describing it as satanic.
CAN had said it rejected the law “because it would snuff life out of the church and rank the church as a secular institution under secular control,” threatening to drag the federal government to court over the law.
