17th December, 2023
The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), has advised the general public to desist from opening /registering businesses that they have no immediate intention to run.
The Director of Compliance, CAC, Mr Justine Nidia, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday.
Nidia said the commission does not encourage people to go ahead and register companies when they have not developed any business idea that would translate into action.
“It is not advisable to register a company and keep it in your briefcase because that is not helpful to the economy,” he said.
According to the director, such companies are termed shelf companies and are discouraged from being kept in the register of companies of CAC.
“The idea of delisting companies is that we should not be seen encouraging shelf companies.
“By shelf companies, we mean registered companies that are redundant or dormant. They are not doing anything.
“So they do not have to be on the register of companies. The appropriate thing to do is to remove them or strike them off the register,” Nidia said.
He said the commission had published an initial list of about 100,000 companies to be delisted.
“We gave an initial period of 90 days, which has elapsed, to those who think they will still be in business to file annual returns for them not to be delisted.
“After the initial publication, about 5,000 companies responded to file their annual returns, with the remaining approximately 95,000 to be delisted.
“What we have done recently is to issue another publication, requesting companies that have filed their returns, and their names are still on the list to get back to us with evidence.
“So we do not delist a company that already filed its return. So we have given an additional period of one month, after which we will gazette the final list,” Nidia said.
(NAN)