By Chris Nomjov
Lawyers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have applauded the new online registration portal of business and company registration parastatal; the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
In separate interviews, with the News Agency Of Nigeria (NAN), on Monday, in Abuja, the lawyers ended the new initiative, as it would ease business with the Commission.
Mr Dauda Abdullahi, a customer of the commission, said the new portal would facilitate easy registration of business names with the CAC.
According to Abdullahi, with the new system, an individual can register a business within 20 minutes, as against the previous method that took weeks.
He said the improved system would facilitate the easy registration of businesses by customers of the CAC, noting that he could now register more companies for his clients.
Also, Mrs Kate Okeke, a lawyer and a client of the commission, corroborated the effectiveness of the portal. She explained that the online registration would enhance business registration from anywhere in the world.
However, differing slightly with the praises for the new development, Mr Mike Omoshegbon another lawyer, expressed dissatisfaction with the portal, explaining that a client could lose money in the course of the transaction.
“This new portal is not different from the old one, in the sense that if it fails in the course of the transaction, one could lose money,’’ he said.
He explained that this was so because the system was programmed in such a way that retrieving payment was impossible.
Omoshegbon further said a crash in the system would invite additional cost on the customers, who would not be able to ask for refunds from clients.
It would be recalled that the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), on Feb. 2 opened a 24-hour online registration platform to fast track its services to customers and ease the exigencies of manual registration.
Dr Olusegun Aganga, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, said the new system was developed by CAC to make registration of business easy and accessible to its clients.
According to him, Nigerians will no longer have to incur extra costs and will not travel to the commission’s office to register their businesses.
Aganga said that the venture was a joint initiative with the Federal Ministry of Communications Technology under Government Service Portal Initiative.
He added that the portal was robust enough to accommodate all platforms such as inter-switch, e- transaction and visa card.(NAN)
