Senate Committee Promises CAMA Overhaul, Seeks To Balance Independent & Shareholder Directors

The Senate has said it would review the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) in order to protect the interest of shareholders to oversee the operations of their business investments.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Tokunbo Abiru gave the assurance on Wednesday at a meeting between his Committee and the Board members of the Bank Directors Association of Nigeria (LTD/GTE) led by its Chairman Mr. Mustapha Chike Obi.

Senator Abiru disclosure was on the heels of a request by Mr . Obi who tabled the challenges bedevilling the Banking industry to the Chairman of the committee, Senator Abiru.

According to him, the CAMA Act states that one-third of all the directors of companies (banks in this case) must be independent directors but unfortunately for banks half of its directors are usually predominantly “Executive directors”. Pointing out the problem Mustapha said that if one-third are selected it will imply that one-third of the half are independent.

According to him, the CAMA Act is unfair to the shareholders because it specifies that five have to be independent which implies that of the eight Non-Executive, five are independent while only three represent the shareholders.

Seeking for a review Mustapha said; “What we thought was that one-third of the non-executives should be independent, not one-third of all the board members should be independent. So shareholders are complaining that we only have 3 seats on the board. Five are independent and the eight are Executives.