Controversy over Nigeria\u2019s new Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) continues to rage, as non-governmental organisations, religious bodies and non-profit organisations continue to react to the wide ranging powers given to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) under part F of the said Act to deregister, suspend and or take actions against the sector. These interests are not criticisng the parts of CAMA that deal with the registration of businesses and companies. The angst is with part F of the law, which was passed as an executive bill in record time by the National Assembly without holding a public hearing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nexperience across jurisdictions is that commissions or bodies set up to\nregulate non-profits can only be effective if they are independent and free\nfrom government interference. The new provisions in Part F of CAMA seem to be\ncopied from the UK Charities Act 2011 without regard to the set-up and\noperations of the Nigerian CAC vis-\u00e0-vis the UK Charities Commission, an\nindependent body solely dedicated to charities, accountable to the Parliament,\nand whose mode of appointment of its board\/leadership is advertised and\ncompetitive. The CAC on the other hand is an executive body whose leadership is\nappointed by the President without legislative approval. It operates under a\nsupervising Minister of Trade who appoints board members representing only\nfor-profit or business interests. There is no non-profit representative on the CAC\nboard. While NGO regulations exist in other common law jurisdictions such as\nthe United Kingdom, Australia, United States and Kenya, and civil law\njurisdictions in Europe due to tax reliefs and State benefits, their ultimate\nobjective is to encourage philanthropic activities for the benefit of society,\nnot to produce a chilling effect in the sector. Nigerian NGOs registered under\nCAMA do not enjoy significant State benefits, when compared to non-profits in\nother jurisdictions, enough to warrant these stringent regulations. Examples\nare Federal and State government grants\/subsidies (most NGO funding comes from\nforeign donors) and tax deductible donations for individuals (only companies in\nNigeria can get rebate on donations they make to non-profits and this is capped\nat 10% of their profits for the year). Even in the face of economic recession\nand the Coronavirus pandemic, the government has not provided the type of\nsupport seen in other countries, e.g. the US Coronavirus Aid, Relief and\nEconomic Security Act (CARES Act) 2020 extends State benefits to US non-profits\nsuch as increased tax deductions for donors, low interest loans, emergency\ngrants and unemployment benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part F of\nthe new CAMA will be difficult to implement because attempts to expand government\npowers or regulations without corresponding incentives and government\naccountability is usually met with strong public resistance. Successful\nimplementation of regulations depends on the level of public trust in the\ngovernment, which is very low in Nigeria. The new CAMA reignites the urgent\nneed for expanded conversations among NGOs\/non-profits on an alternative\neffective and satisfactory regulatory model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Controversy over Nigeria\u2019s new Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) continues to rage, as non-governmental organisations, religious bodies and non-profit organisations continue to react to the wide ranging powers given to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) under part F of the said Act to deregister, suspend and or take actions against the sector. These interests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-new-registration-law-threatens-independence-of-non-profits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689","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=1689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1697,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions\/1697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}