Senator Yusuf Yusuf, representing (Taraba Central) senatorial zone has revealed that the Integrated Corporate and Commercial Data Management Commission bill was conceived to fight corruption in Nigeria.
Yusuf, who is the sponsor of the bill also disclosed that the commission when established will be self financing, “it is not going to be a dip into the treasury, it is going to be self financing”.
The lawmaker noted that contrary to insinuations in certain quarters, the commission when established will not duplicate functions of other government agencies “but it is about agumenting, so I hope and pray we will all continue to interact more and more so that we will understand this bill”.
“I didn’t want to come out because that bill is to fight corruption. Have you been seeing people sign cheques with thumbprint? Why can’t I sign cheque with my thumbprint? If I sign, who will fault my cheque, so these are all serious issues that we need to sit down and look.
“If we follow the intent of this bill, all these will stop, because if you are signing agreement, you also sign by putting your thumbprint.
“It is only in this country that you hear a director, say I have 50 registered companies, it is me, my wife and my children, whether you like it or not, it is we that are going to win the bids.
“And you expect that that person will fight corruption” Yusuf said.
Senator Yusuf explained that “many people misunderstood what the bill is all about. This bill is not challenging the function of any other agency. It is not trying to ursurp the powers of any other agency, this one is an agency that will corroborate.
“I raised some fundamental issues, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), does not have data base of Institutions that it has not incorporated. And therefore it cannot claim that it has all the data base of all statutory Institutions in the country, therefore our own role will be to create integrity of data, of what people do. I gave an example today, people have so many accounts, even with BVN, people have more than one BVN, which is not right.
“If you have 1000 accounts, it should be attach to just one BVN, that is why every where in this world, there is only one BVN for each account holder, but you see in this country there is no that kind of integrity and therefore we want to create an institution that will sit down and isolate all these cases and make it professional in such away that it is not the role of CAC after it has issued its own certificate to begin to say what is the integrity of our certificate.
“When you talk about NIMC, is about national identity for individuals, we are talking of corporate identity, so they are different things all together. When you talk about NCC, they totally misunderstood what we are talking about, what we are saying, is that in this country, we need to grade Companies and statutory Institutions and what have you”.
Senator Yusuf added that in the 8th Assembly, the bill didn’t go to third reading, because it stopped at public hearing stage, saying “time caught up with us, and now we have about 14 months to go hopefully, first quarter of 2022, we are going to do the third reading.
“So between now and first quarter of next year, we are going to do the third reading and probably even do the concurrence and prepare the bill to go to the executive”.
