CAC Seeks Support on NIMC Database for Transparency

Management of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has sought the support of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) on the database system to curb the false disclosure of beneficial ownership.

It said the NIMC database will help for the veracity of information provided by companies before starting their registration.

Alhaji Garuba Abubakar, registrar-general of CAC,  disclosed this while fielding questions from newsmen yesterday, stressing that gaining access to the NIMC database will help to disclose the right information about the persons involved in beneficial ownership of any organization.

Abubakar who gave a lecture at a 2-day Beneficial Ownership (BO) Toolkit project pilot organized by  Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Transparency International-Nigeria (TI-N) with support from the Tax Justice Network – Africa (TJNA), also, added that CAC will soon deploy an open data format where persons with multiple beneficial can be exposed.

“Considerable work has been done in that area and we hope that very soon that integration will be concluded and we will be validating this information.

To achieve the open data format, he said: “We are getting support from the world bank OGP multimillion funds to support.”

Earlier, Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, executive director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), said lack of implementation of beneficial ownership by companies owners has caused retrogression to the economic progress of the country.

“Business Ownership register can be used for tracking the owners of companies and even help to know the tax holiday given to the companies.”