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By Tajudeen Ademola
The Judicial Learning Center,defines laws as “rules that bind all people living in a community. Laws protect our general safety, and ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations, and by the government itself”.
It’s an acknowledged fact that without law men are beasts. According to Aristotle “at his best,man is the noblest of all animals;separated from law and Justice he is the worst”. This fundamentally explains why laws that cover virtually every area of life from food safety, licensing of professionals like doctors to day to day social relationships have been promulgated at the local, state and national levels.
There is absolutely no doubt that laws might be “hard”, but since it’s the law it must be obeyed to the latter, and outright refusal to comply with the provision of the law that makes registration of socio-cultural bodies like the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union(SOKAPU) is an invitation to anarchy. SOKAPU by its willful refusal or failure to register before it commenced its activities,simply means that it’s a law unto itself and above the law. The fact that SOKAPU belatedly in 2019 attempted to regularize its operation,doesn’t absolve it of charges of gross impunity, which it often accuses government of. It’s a shame that the likes of Simon Reef Musa,who have led the Southern Kaduna Senatorial District to a dead end,have as usual attempted to pull wools over the eyes of the people that SOKAPU is not under any “obligation” to register with the Corporate Affairs Commission(CAC).
Simon Reef Musa , with magisterial authority obviously acquired from Mama T Bar, averred that “SOKAPU is not an enterprise and therefore, the hullabaloo over non-registration of the union by the Corporate Affairs Commission(CAC) is a display of pure ignorance”. If anyone can be accused of displaying crass ignorance on whether SOKAPU should be registered or not , it’s manifestly Musa who wants to stand truth on it’s head and to mislead those who think he should know due to his professional calling. If truly SOKAPU didn’t need government nod,why did it bother applying for it in the first place? If only Musa had asked himself this simple question,he wouldn’t have made himself a laughing stock. The fact is that it dawned rather too late on SOKAPU that it’s operation was illegal, but unfortunately for the association because it has shown its hands, it was rightly denied registration. The point must be made that an illegal action, can not become legal no matter how noble the intention of the organization.
For the benefit of Musa and his fellow travelers, under the Company and Allied Matters Act(CAMA), socio-cultural organizations like SOKAPU,and Non-Governmental Organizations(NGO’s) are not only subject to registration,but with very stringent conditions for security and accountability purposes. Registration it must be stated is a two way traffic – ensuing on one lane that no government agency or individual can hinder/stop a body like SOKAPU from operating and on the other lane ensuring that the organization engages only in the business that it is registered to engage in. And in the specific case of SOKAPU the CAC was right to refuse it registration on the grounds that its activities are more political,than cultural. And that being the case,that the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) is the right body to register it,so that SOKAPU can like the All Progressives Congress(APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) officially canvass for votes and sponsor candidates rather than the present hide and seek political engagement, that has characterized its activities, while claiming to be a cultural organization.
The government in it’s wisdom enacted the Company and Allied Matters Act(CAMA) to ensure law and order, because if everyone is at liberty to choose which law to obey and which to disobey, there would certainly be anarchy. Thankfully the “new president” of the illegal SOKAPU Jonathan Asake was a one time Member of the House of Representatives and it will be interesting to see if he will toe the lines of the likes of Musa or change direction that would enable the CAC register the body. From the outset, it must be stated that it was poor judgement and lack of strategic thinking by leaders of SOKAPU as reflected in its rabid activities that made SOKAPU put the cart before the horse. But this is not to say that the government wouldn’t have eventually withdrawn the registration certificate, if its activities ran counter to its stated objectives,but at least it would have been on record that it was not an illegal body.
In law there are two (2) categories of persons – the artificial and natural. Any other person has no legal ground to sue or be sued and consequently cannot validly carry out any legal activity. SOKAPU being a group of people that decided to come “together under a particular or given name to pursue a course,must be registered” under Part C -Incorporated Trustees of CAMA Act. Section 590(1) of the CAMA Act states “Where one or more trustees are appointed by any community of persons bound together by Custom, religion,kinship or nationality or by any body or association of persons established for any religious, educational, literary, scientific, social, development, cultural, sporting, or charitable purpose, he or they may,if so authorized by the community, body or association (in this Act referred to as “the association”) apply to the Commission in the manner hereafter provided for registration under this Act as a corporate body.” Sub Section (2) further states that “Upon being so registered by the Commission,the trustee or trustees shall become a corporate body in accordance with the provisions of Section 679 of this Part of this Act.”
Section 596(1) of the Act further stressed that “From the date of their registration, the trustee or trustees shall become a body corporate by the name described in the certificate, and shall have perpetual succession and a common seal, and power to sue and be sued in its corporate name and as such trustee or trustees and subject to section 12 of this part of this act to hold and acquire, and transfer, assign or otherwise dispose of any property or interest therein belonging to, or held for the benefit of such association, in such manner and subject to such restrictions and provisions as the trustees might without incorporation, hold or acquire, transfer, assign or otherwise dispose of the same for the purposes of such community, body or association of person.” Simon Reef Musa should do well to aver his mind to the CAMA Act.
Clearly SOKAPU has once again shot itself in the foot,like it always does on every issue and the implication is that it’s going to be difficult for the CAC to change its stance and register it. And in what can be the begin of the end for SOKAPU, having been declared an illegal organization, the government can legitimately go after it like it went after the Islamic Movement of Nigeria(IMN) and ensure that it stops parading itself under any guise. SOKAPU being an organization that relies on funding from its supporters can be denied access to banking services,which in the first instance it shouldn’t have had access to,because it is not a registered body. SOKAPU must take huge blame for the way and manner(politically exaggerating the scale of the killings and its zero contribution to Peace building efforts) it mismanaged not just political, but social relationships,which has hastened its death.
But how well has SOKAPU fared in both it’s stated objectives and it’s misadventure in politics? Regrettably on all fronts its report card is abysmally dismal.Southern Kaduna tribes in spite of SOKAPU remain more divided than they were before the formation of the body. SOKAPU has also in spite of several workshops woefully failed to jump start the economy of the area to address the problem of youth unemployment which is part of the crisis confronting the area. Was SOKAPU focused it would have frontally addressed youth unrest,because it is this generation of angry and unemployed youths who at the slightest provocation take up arms against their neighbors in the name of retaliation,that have given the region a bad name and squandered whatever sympathy there was for the attacks on the area by bandit. And the disastrous 2019 General elections is an eloquent testimony of the failure of its negative politics of exclusion,which refused to accept Southern Kaduna as a rainbow region, which also demonized any son or daughter that dared to belong to the All Progressives Congress(APC).
Moving forward the security agencies must investigate how SOKAPU was able to open an account with Nigerian banks, when it’s not a registered organization. The point must be stressed that Nigeria remains a nation of laws. Lacking registration how did SOKAPU met the stringent requirements that enabled it to open its operational account?