The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) says it has commenced registration of 300,000 agents and Marchants of Opay financial services providers across the country.
The Registrar-General of CAC, Ishaq Hussaini Magaji SAN, disclosed this when he received the Management of Opay on a courtesy visit on Tuesday.
According to Magaji, “Every businesses operating in Nigeria have to be registered with the CAC in accordance with Company and Allied Matters Act, adding that the registration of financial businesses would aide their inclusion for economic growth.
“Last week, we had to accommodate over two million small businesses, and today we are here to accommodate Opay services” and affiliated businesses with the aim of encouraging business start up in Nigeria.”
The Registrar called on content creators and Social Media Influencers to register their businesses as ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
“It is stated in the Company and Allied Matters of 2020 that for any business to take place in Nigeria, if you are doing a business, whether with your name, or with another name or for any transaction that you are doing that is bringing in money, you must register.
“If you are a content creator on the internet, you have followership and you are gaining from it, you must register, that’s the provision of the law. And we are all out to enforce the provision of the law”.
Magaji explained that the law penalises businesses on a daily basis and if the law is to be applied, some business names would be penalized from the day they started the business without due registration with the commission.
“But we decided in line with the president’s renewed hope agenda to provide jobs, to provide access to wealth, we decided to regularize and accommodate it into the system” he stated.
Earlier in his remarks, the Executive Director of Opay, Dr. Maxwell Loko, commended CAC for accommodating the over 300,000 businesses for registration and promised that the financial service provider and its agents would undergo all the legal procedures to get registered.
