Several professionals and professional associations have praised the recent signing into law, of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), 2020. Yet, little connection is being made between its laudable provisions on the ease of doing business and the threats that the law may pose to civic space and freedom of association. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are expressing concern that the \u2018Part F\u2019 provisions of CAMA regulating the incorporation and operations of NGOs, referred to as Incorporated Trustees may be applied to threaten and shrink civic space. NGOS are particularly worried about the provisions of section 839 of CAMA that give the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) powers to suspend the trustees of an association and appoint an interim manager or managers to run the affairs of an association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
839 (1) The Commission may by order\nsuspend the trustees of an association and appoint an interim manager or\nmanagers to manage the affairs of an association where it reasonably believes\nthat \u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(a) there\nis or has been any misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of the\nassociation; <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(b) it is\nnecessary or desirable for the purpose of \u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(i) protecting the property of\nthe association, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(ii) securing a proper\napplication for the property of the association towards achieving the objects\nof the association, the purposes of the association of that property or of the\nproperty coming to the association, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(iii) public interest; or <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(c) the\naffairs of the association are being run fraudulently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The section empowers the Commission to among other\nissues, appoint managers for an association, in \u201cpublic interest.\u201d Although the\nAct gives the Commission such powers in the event of misconduct, mismanagement\nor fraud in the affairs of an association, the concern among NGOs is on the\nsubjective and discretionary nature of these determinations. There are also\npowers in the Act for Trustees to be suspended by an order of court upon the\npetition of the Commission or one-fifth of members of an association, providing\nreasonable evidence in support of their petition. NGOs have fought back for\nseveral years against government plans on regulation and worry about possible\npolitical use of regulation to stifle NGOs that are critical of government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new CAMA was passed by the National Assembly in\nthe thick of the COVID-19 pandemic and without an opportunity for a public\nhearing that such a contentious law would normally require. NGOs also worry\nthat the onerous provisions of the Act which create additional reporting\nburdens, including bi-annual rather than the usual annual filing of returns to\nthe CAC (section 845) may create challenges for NGOs struggling to survive.\nThere is also the worry that the philosophy of NGOs being the private\ninitiatives of individuals and vehicles for their delivering and filling the\ngaps in governance is being jeopardised by these provisions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several professionals and professional associations have praised the recent signing into law, of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), 2020. Yet, little connection is being made between its laudable provisions on the ease of doing business and the threats that the law may pose to civic space and freedom of association. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-new-cama-raises-civic-space-concerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}