10th October, 2019
Lady Azuka Azinge, acting Registrar-General, Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), said on Wednesday in Abuja, that the upgrade of the Company Registration Portal (CRP) is to enhance the incorporation process.
Azinge, who spoke at a news conference, dismissed the allegation that the CRP upgrade was aimed at siphoning money.
She described the allegation as false and illogical, saying that it was a mischievous smear campaign against her.
The Company Registration Portal is the software that drives the operations of the commission.
Azinge added that the move to upgrade the software was geared toward ensuring improved efficiency, provision of greater customer experience and ease of doing business.
She, however, said that the commission reverted to its previous system when the initiative could not be realised.
According to her, the management decided on infrastructure upgrade of certain operational process in two major areas, E-Certificate and Certified True Copies (CTC).
“This was an upgrade of pre-incorporation process designed to enable customers to print certificates and certified true copies of filed documents from their ends.
“The upgrade as originally designed was aimed at doing away with physical contact with the commission or Federal Inland Revenue Service in the registration process.
“The initiative was to ensure improved efficiency, provide greater customer experience and further ease doing business.
“But the desired objective was not realised and the commission had to revert to status quo,’’ Azinge said.
She, however, said that the commission had deployed online post-incorporation modules where all post-incorporation applications are currently partially automated.
According to Azinge, seven high volume post-incorporation processes were deployed on Aug. 19, 2019.
She emphasised that the deployment was aimed at enhancing operational efficiency, save cost for both the organisation and customers and also promote ease of doing business.
“Pre and post-incorporation processes were already ongoing processes for which payments were made on the Treasury Single Account (TSA) Platform (Remita).
“It is difficult to see how an upgrade of existing process that had established mode of payment could result in siphoning money when the mode of payment itself did not change.
“The allegation that CRP upgrade was aimed at siphoning money is not only patently false, but illogical,’’ Azinge said.
She said that the vendors of the software, Messrs Oasis Nigeria Limited was engaged by the commission in 2014, after approval by the Federal Executive Council.