The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has called for the harmonisation and centralisation of Nigeria's beneficial ownership information to strengthen transparency and combat corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering, terrorism financing and abuse of corporate structures.
The Registrar-General/Chief Executive of the CAC, Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, made the call during a training on the Beneficial Ownership Register for journalists and Civil Society Organisations on Tuesday.
The Registrar-General said Nigeria currently operates three separate beneficial ownership transparency registers under different institutional frameworks.
These are the Beneficial Ownership Register maintained by the CAC, beneficial ownership information on entities operating within Free Trade Zones under the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), and beneficial ownership information relating to the extractive industries maintained within the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) framework.
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According to the CAC, although the sectoral arrangements have legitimate statutory reasons, the information being sought by the three systems is substantially the same.
The Commission said the systems ultimately seek to establish who owns an entity, who controls it, who benefits from it and the natural person behind the corporate structure.
The Registrar-General said Nigeria should therefore move towards a coordinated national framework, with the CAC corporate registry serving as the central corporate data backbone.
"My position is clear: Nigeria should work towards harmonising and centralising beneficial ownership information within a coordinated national framework, with the CAC corporate registry serving as the central corporate data backbone," the Registrar-General said.
He stressed that the proposal was not intended to undermine the statutory responsibilities of NEPZA or NEITI, but to ensure that information held by the different institutions could be connected.
He said fragmented information could make it difficult to obtain a complete picture of a company's ownership, particularly where a business operates across different sectors and regulatory environments.
"If the objective is transparency and accountability, then information should not exist in silos. We must make it possible to see the complete picture," he said.
He explained that Nigeria's legal and regulatory framework uses the term "Person with Significant Control" (PSC) to capture the concept of beneficial ownership.
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The Persons with Significant Control Rules, 2022 provide the framework for disclosure of persons who ultimately exercise significant ownership, control or influence over companies and other relevant entities.
The Registrar-General said the objective was to "lift the veil of complexity" surrounding corporate structures and make ultimate ownership and control more transparent.
