Abuja: The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has called for harmonisation of Nigeria’s beneficial ownership registers to strengthen transparency and accountability. The CAC Registrar-General, Hussaini Magaji, made the call at a one-day stakeholder workshop in Abuja on Tuesday. Magaji said harmonising the registers would ensure that information on persons who ultimately own or control companies was accessible through a coordinated national framework. He said disclosure of beneficial ownership was crucial aimed at combating corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering, terrorism financing and abuse of corporate structures.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Magaji explained that Nigeria’s legal and regulatory framework addresses beneficial ownership through the term, Persons with Significant Control (PSC). The framework aims to identify the natural persons who ultimately own, control, or significantly influence corporate structures. He emphasized that beneficial ownership information should serve as a practical tool for transparency, corporate accountability, investigative journalism, and law enforcement. Magaji urged journalists and civil society organisations to interrogate ownership structures, investigate corporate relationships, and responsibly use information obtained from the register. He cautioned that the appearance of a person’s name in corporate records did not constitute evidence of criminality and stressed the importance of verifying information before publication.
Maimunat Modi, Associate at the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ACIS), highlighted beneficial ownership as a global transparency concept that had evolved over time. She noted that the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020 provides Nigeria’s general legal framework for beneficial ownership disclosure through PSCs. Modi clarified that a beneficial owner must be a natural person with significant ownership, voting rights, influence, or control over a company or other legal entity. She explained that beneficial ownership is a proactive transparency mechanism rather than the traditional corporate law concept of lifting the veil. Modi further distinguished legal ownership from beneficial ownership, noting that while a legal owner could be a beneficial owner, a beneficial owner did not necessarily have to be the legal owner.
Musikilu Mojeed, Editor-in-Chief of Premium Times Nigeria, urged journalists to use beneficial ownership data to produce public-interest stories and investigate corporate structures. Mojeed pointed out that complex ownership arrangements could involve several companies and jurisdictions, complicating the identification of individuals ultimately benefiting from assets and transactions. He encouraged journalists investigating public contracts to ask critical questions about the real owners of companies benefiting from government projects. Mojeed stated that beneficial ownership information could assist journalists in investigating corruption, money laundering, illicit financial flows, asset concealment, and questionable public procurement.
Odeh Friday, Country Director of Accountability Lab Nigeria, called for stronger interoperability among government databases to enable journalists and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to connect beneficial ownership information with other relevant records. He emphasized that access to beneficial ownership information should be connected with public procurement, property, financial, and other government databases. Friday urged journalists and CSOs to connect the dots by combining information from different sources to establish ownership, financial, and corporate relationships. He also advocated for improved data sharing among government agencies, asserting that better access to information would strengthen public accountability and enable citizens to make informed decisions.
The stakeholders’ workshop aimed to improve journalists’ and CSOs’ understanding of beneficial ownership disclosure and the use of the Beneficial Ownership Register. Participants were encouraged to use beneficial ownership information to enhance investigative reporting, public accountability, and efforts to trace illicitly acquired assets.