About 30,000 lawyers plan to team up with accountants to sue the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) over its computer failure which has grounded the operations of organisations doing business with it.
The CAC reported total disruption of its registration services on August 15, which it described as a deliberate attempt to sabotage efforts to deploy a new online registration system beginning from October 1.
The lawyers reportedly defied the directive of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and staged a public demonstration at the CAC headquarters in Abuja on Monday, September 15.
CAC fails to deliver on promise
One of them, Anthony Okoye, said “availability search” now takes more than three weeks to complete instead of the 24 hours advertised by the CAC.
It declares in its 2014 hand book that “investors and entrepreneurs desirous of tapping from Nigeria’s abundant investment opportunities can now incorporate their companies within 24 hours.
“This abolishes the bureaucratic and cumbersome procedure hitherto associated with company incorporation.”
But Okoye, who is based in Abuja, lamented that “all the names entered into their system from August 14 have disappeared. There is no record of them and no back up for retrieval.
“They wanted us to pay afresh but we resisted it. It was then agreed that those with photocopies of such transactions should produce them. That is what we are relying on now.”
Alleged sabotage by service provider
But a text message the NBA sent to CAC Public Affairs Director, Williams Kombo, said “members are implored to abide by resolutions of last Friday’s meeting with CAC reps and go about their lawful businesses with CAC and ignore messages from a faceless and illegal group.”
Kombo insisted that the problem is the hand work of “saboteurs”, narrating that “our services were down for about two weeks, there is no doubt about that but we have ratified it now.
“We suspect sabotage from people who would not see anything good in the services of the CAC which has redefined service delivery in this country. We see it as a campaign of calumny.”
He dismissed as untrue claims that the problem may have been caused by the way the service provider lost his contract without being paid.
“We had a service provider who had been providing us service for many years. Then there was desire for upgrading which was not forthcoming.
“The minister of trade and investment made an announcement to the effect that from October 1, a new service provider has to be engaged. Then this service provider decided to sabotage us.”
CAC denies owing service provider
Kombo denied that the CAC owes the service provider who allegedly put a code that damaged the system.
“We are not indebted to him. The original agreement was that he has to be paid in stages and we have been complying with that agreement. We are not owing him and we are not phasing him out completely.”
He also dismissed reports that the problem started when CAC Registrar General/Chief Executive Officer, Bello Mahmud, assumed duty last year and brought in his kinsmen to take over the job.
Mahmud, he insisted, “has no interest whatsoever in the person so to be engaged or where he or she comes from. His interest is only in the ability of the service provider to deliver quality service that will be to the satisfaction of the customers.
“That is all. So this talk about he trying to bring in his own person, is not true.”
Kombo recounted that the disruption came when the CAC was taking steps to deploy a new online registration system but it has now “restored services and is still making frantic efforts to improve the services to an optimal level through a new online system.”
Why systems upgrade
The configuration of the new online system was borne out of the fact that the existing one has functional limitations in features and user ability, he added.
“We have started a new bottom-up application development which will be launched in stages, starting with name search and online payment by the end of the month.”
This will be followed by pre and post incorporation registration services.
The expectation is that at the end of the process, services will reach optimum level “within the next six months” when all applications on services will be automated and available online.