AFTER 30 years, President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday in Abuja assented to the Companies and Allied Matters Bill, 2020.
Disclosing the development, Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to the president on Media and Publicity, in a statement stated that, “The President’s action on this important piece of legislation, therefore, repealed and replaced the extant Companies and Allied Matters Act, 1990, introducing after 30 years, several corporate legal innovations geared toward enhancing ease of doing business in the country.”
Adesina explained that the innovations encapsulated in the bill include filing fee reductions and other reforms that would make it easier and cheaper for small and medium-sized enterprises to register and reform their businesses in Nigeria.
He also said the bill would give room for corporate promoters of companies to establish private companies shareholder and as well create limited liability partnerships and limited partnerships to give investors and business people alternative forms of carrying out their business in a flexible and efficient way.
Other benefits outlined to come with the bill, according to Adesina’s statement, are “Innovating processes and procedures to ease the operations of companies, such as introducing statements of compliance, replacing “authorised share capital” with minimum share capital to reduce costs of incorporating companies.
Others are, “electronic filing, electronic share transfers, e-meetings as well as remote general meetings for private companies in response to the disruptions to close contact physical meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring the disclosure of persons with significant control of companies in a register of beneficial owners to enhance corporate accountability and transparency; and
“Enhancing the minority shareholder protection and engagement; introducing enhanced business rescue reforms for insolvent companies; and permitting the merger of Incorporated Trustees for associations that share similar aims and objectives.”
'Niyi worked with The ICIR as an Investigative Reporter and Fact-checker from 2020 till September 2022. You can shoot him an email via niyioyedeji1@gmail.com. You can as well follow him on Twitter via @niyi_oyedeji.