The Register General and Chief Executive Officer of the Corporate Affair Commission (CAC), Barrister Bello Mahmud, has intensified efforts at educating people to register their businesses.
Mahmud made this disclosure in an interview with an online economic magazine, Economic Confidential. According to him, the commission has registered over two million names as at December 31, 2011.
He hinted that the commission was not stopping there and that it will soon widen its enforcement activities by using the services of independent professionals to reach out to unregistered businesses and get them registered.
In his words, “Our State offices have intensified their enforcement drive through regular inspection visits to verify the status of businesses being generated in their area of activities.
In addition, the Commission he said, was liaising with contract awarding bodies both in the public and private sector to further enforce the practice of confirming the status of companies before contracts are awarded.”
The RG admitted that in spite of the affordability of business registration, many companies still operate illegally. He said “We have observed that in spite of the establishment of offices in all states of the Federation and other efforts being made to ease the process of registration of businesses, some people still carry on businesses without registration.
This has created opportunities for unscrupulous elements to use such unregistered businesses to defraud unsuspecting citizens. This is unacceptable and a trend contrary to the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA).”
Barrister Mahmud also disclosed that the commission would soon strike off about 50,000 companies that have remained dormant over the years and refused to file their annual returns even after registration.