Why CAMA Will Continue To Attract Controversy

By Chuks Ekpeneru

The Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, Garba Abubakar, has fended off the controversy arising from the amended Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020 that gives the supervising minister the power to remove the board of trustees of churches without recourse to the court.

Abubakar said the law is only aimed at ensuring more robust business environment and financial accountability in registered associations.

Section 839 (1) &(2) of the amendment signed into law by President Muhamadu Buhari on August 7, 2020 provides that the Registrar-General of Corporate Affairs Commission and a supervising minister, will strictly regulate religious bodies and non-governmental organisations.

However, Church leaders are not ready to accept the position of the government on the highly sensitive issue.

The reason may not be far-fetched. In 2018, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) again raised alarm that the President was unduly favouring Muslims from Northern Nigeria in federal appointments.

However, the government has repeatedly denied that Buhari’s appointments favour any particular section of the country, saying proponents of such do not take a holistic review of the president’s appointments.

To CAN and other Christian leaders, CAMA may be part of the unfolding plots to muscle the church in the country.

According to CAN, CAMA 2020 is “unacceptable, ungodly and a declaration of war on the church.”

It said further, “a time bomb’’ whose explosion would not only ”snuff life out of the church’’ but rank it (church) as “a secular institution under secular control.

Speaking on the debate, Presiding Bishop of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, Dr David Oyedepo, advised the Federal Government to expunge the part of the law that gives it power over affairs of the church.

Oyedepo is supported by the founder of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Oke-Afa, Ejigbo Lagos, Primate Elijah Ayodele, who said that nobody can appoint anybody over the church he invested his blood, sweat, and money on.

Prophet Ayodele said that a prophecy had earlier gone out in the year that said that the government would want to test the church as he added that the new CAMA is a joke and dead on arrival.

For now, the church seems to be waiting to see how government will implement the law.

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