Alhaji Garba Abubakar, CAC’s Registrar-General, in an interview with newsmen in Abuja, said the commission was ensuring this digitally through its unique portal.
“There is no government agency that has a truly self-serving portal as the CAC and our services are rendered 24/7.
“We don’t have weekends, we don’t have public holidays, we don’t have Christmas, we don’t have Sallah. Our staff works any time of the day, any day of the week to continue to render services to Nigerians,” Abubakar said.
On cost, he said it had been a deliberate policy at the commission for clients to access basic information about all the entities registered for free to Nigerians.
“So, if you want to know whether a company is registered. You will have information about the name, the address in the document, the date of registration, and the registration number.
“And we have added the Beneficial Ownership Information as a deliberate policy consistent with our regulations. This is what will help and support our anti-corruption initiative.
“If the members of the public and the civil society and investigation agencies have access to this information, it gives them the opportunity, the latitude to do their work more efficiently.
“They don’t have to call us, they don’t have to send any letter to us, they can access this information on their own and use this information in the course of their investigation.”
According to Abubakar, the commission would on May 25, inaugurate the register for the Beneficial Ownership Information, which is a key initiative of the government.
He said the stand-alone register would allow people to query the database either by the name of the individual or by his address or the name of the company.
Abubakar said it would also provide all the necessary information required on the entity.
On the penalty, the registrar-general urged Nigerians to report whatever they perceived as a misstatement or false declaration.
“The law is clear, anybody that makes any false declaration is liable for conviction to two years imprisonment.
“So once we discover that, we will report to the relevant law enforcement and they will take it up from there. After prosecution the person that made the false declaration will be liable to two years jail term,” he said.
The CAC boss said the commission also integrated with the National Identity Management database to ensure the integrity of the information received via its portal.
According to him, the integration allows the commission to instantly validate the information about the individual.
“With this integration, we no longer require you to even upload your signature. Before now, sometimes we have cases where means of identification were cloned.
“Some names other than the main owners are super-imposed and submitted to us for registration. We had the course to query some of them, request for the original for sighting and they will disappear.
“So with integration, that is no longer possible. For every Nigerian, you will only be able to register if you have a National Identification Number,” he said.
(NAN)
