This report has been taken down in compliance with a court order

It is imperative when non-lawyers want to comment on a piece of legislation to seek the aid of lawyers in order to enrich their discourse.

Firstly, with the title, “hidden horrors”, the gullible may be persuaded to think these were “smuggled in” or hidden from the bill when being considered. The truth is nothing was “hidden” in the bill. Nigerians had the chance to engage with the bill and its provisions just as we did with the Social Media bill, etc referenced in the article but most “civil society groups” thought it was something that concerned companies (because of the title and didnt engage as robustly as it would have.

In the entire article, the second issue raised concerning BRIPAN i believe is the only valid one. Normally, under a law, it is sufficient that the law simply says that practitioners (in this case insolvency practitioners) must be members of a recognised professional body in that field and nothing more. Specifying BRIPAN which is a private company limited by guarantee raises valid issues of cronyism and inelegant drafting. On this both the legislators who went through a clause by clause consideration and nigerians in general who didnt give the bill the required public scrutiny, dropped the ball.

On the other issues raised by the writer, it betrays his lack of knowledge of the law and legal interpretation of statutes. With regards to Section 839, while subsection 1 says the trustees of an association may be suspended by order of the commission, subsection 2 specifies that such order must be by a court and the subsequent subsections detail the process and procedures. So, No the CAC is not placed above the courts and cant suspend suo moto (on its own) without a court order.

With regards to the charge of “criminalising the informal sector”, the writer betrays a misreading of section 863. Subsection 1 of that section says a person or association of persons shall not carry on a business AS a company, partnership, busines name, etc without registration. It doesnt criminalise the informal sector or say an individual cannot engage in buying and selling, but if you must do so using a business name or company, etc then such entity must be registered. This is standard all over the world and the writer may make reference to the old CAMA for similar provisions. In any case, what you’ll find is that many Nigerians have registered business names with which they carry on business no matter how micro some of those businesses are.

Also pre-action notice as provided in section 17 is standard in most legislations creating public corporations, it doesnt elevate the company above the law that you’re serving it a pre-action notice.

The most egregious is the attempt by the writer to feed into the current hoopla about chinese loans by suggesting tongue in cheek that chinese companies are exempt from registration. This is just feeding into his confirmation bias. I’d advise him, even though hes not a lawyer to read through the old CAMA enacted in 1990 and see similar provisions – in order to see that this is not for chinese companies.

Overall, public commentators owe a duty to their readers, while expressing their opionions, not to mix up facts or mislead the public by their own ignorance.