The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has withdrawn the registration certificate of Ohaneze Ndigbo General Assembly.
The Registrar General of CAC, Mr. Garba Abubakar, said the measure was part of the reforms the Commission was put in place to thoroughly scrutinize applications following security threats that may arise from such registrations.
Ohaneze Ndigbo was not the only Scio-cultural group affected by the sanction, the certificate of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and other socio-cultural groups in Nigeria was also withdrawn.
He said: “Yes, we have withdrawn the certificate of Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly because the certificate should not have been issued in the first instance.
“We have an established protocol that all organizations; ethnic, religious with political implication should be referred for security clearance before such organizations are registered. In 2017, a similar organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide applied to be registered and security agencies rejected it.
“It would have been a double standard to allow another organization to be registered. Up till now, Arewa Consultative Forum is not registered because they were not given security clearance; we have South-South Youth Forum, NorthEast Youth Forum and so many organizations that have not been allowed to register.
“What we have done after withdrawing the certificate (of Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly), we now referred the application for security clearance, if at the end of the day we are advised that this object is consistent with what the law says, and the trustees are fit and proper, then we will go ahead, but till then, we have withdrawn the certificate and they have threatened to go to court, we are lawyers, we will meet them in court.”
Recall that anaedoonline.ng published that the splinter group of the Ohaneze Ndigbo headed by Basil Onuorah was deregistered earlier this month, due to their inability to meet up with the necessary requirements.
Post Disclaimer
The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author and forum participants on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Anaedo Online or official policies of the Anaedo Online.