CAC enforces policy on pre-incorporation certificates amid protest

By Felix Khanoba

The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) says it will on Friday 24 July, 2020 begin the enforcement of a new policy that will ensure all pre-incorporation certificates are delivered to customers by designated courier companies.

The Commission said the policy became imperative to guard against the spread of COVID-19 following the huge number of customers that always troop to its headquarters for the certificates.

The Registrar General of CAC, Garba Abubakar, stated this while reacting to a protest by some aggrieved customers at the corporate headquarters of the commission in Abuja on Thursday.

“We are a responsible institution. We have to abide by government directives. We cannot continue with this crowd in this place and something has to give way.

What we have done is to insist that mailing not have any physical contact with customers any longer.

“From tomorrow all new certificates will be sent through courier companies and the customers will bear the cost because they are paying for transport or buying fuel to drive themselves to this place, they can as well pay the cost of delivery.

From 10th August every other process will be done by mailing,” he said.

The Registrar General said the Commission will no longer allow outsiders to have access to sensitive documents as practiced in the past but operate based on accepted global standard practices.

“We try to impress on the customers to understand that these are unusual times and as much as we want efficient services it is not possible under the present circumstance. What we do now is we have to suspend physical contact for some transaction like searches. We made it a policy that all search reports will now be issued by the commission, our officers will conduct the searches,” he said.

Meanwhile, customers, mainly lawyers, who barricaded the CAC’s headquarters in Abuja on Thursday to protest over alleged poor services of the Commission, said the agency under Garba Abubakar has become a major albatross to the Ease of Doing Business Policy being championed by the Federal Government.

The protesters ‘armed’ with various placards with various negative inscriptions to denounce the management style of the present CAC leadership, said shouldering the cost of courier service in incorporation certificates’ delivery would be too much for them to bear.

While calling for an e-delivery of the certificates, the lawyers also protested a newly introduced policy which says a Consent of Registrar General is needed to register an incorporated trustee.