Seek Review Of CAMA 2020 At National Assembly, Osinbajo Advises Religious Organisation

Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo has advised religious organisations who are aggrieved over the Company and Allied Matters Act 2020 (CAMA 2020) signed by President Muhammadu Buhari to approach the National Assembly for amendment.

Religious organisations, most especially the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), are strongly opposed to section 839 (1) (a),(b),(c) of the CAMA 2020 law which empowers the supervising minister “to suspend trustees of an association (in this case, the church) and appoint the interim managers to manage the affairs of the association for some given reasons”.

However, at the Annual General Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) which held on Thursday, Osinbajo said seeking redress of CAMA through the National Assembly was the right and available process for amendment.

“We have a process by which this (CAMA law) can be redressed. Whatever the proposal for amendment may be, whatever the view of the leadership of the church may be, regarding the question of how the trustees, whether they are interim trustees or not, can be put into a proposal that will be brought to the National Assembly for consideration for amendment to the law, that is the process which is entirely opened and ought to be pursued,” he said.

“We are in a democracy and there is a process by which things can be done and that process is the one where you bring forward amendments to the National Assembly and they will do whatever is considered useful in the circumstance.”

The Vice President, however, argued that Christian organisations were against the particular provisions of CAMA because they do not want to be accountable.

“As a general position, I do not think it is right to say that pastors do not want to be accountable. As a matter of fact, as you know I am a pastor. I know that question is also partly directed to me. But I must say that is not the case. I believe that several Christian organisations and pastors are willing to be accountable,” he said.

“I think that the problem they may have is with ensuring that processes are not abused in such a way to compromise the entire organisation.”