CAC's Magaji Calls for Centralised Beneficial Ownership Data

Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, the Registrar-General and Chief Executive of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), called for the harmonisation and centralisation of beneficial ownership information in Nigeria to address illicit financial flows and related crimes. Speaking at a training workshop for journalists and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Abuja, Magaji highlighted that fragmented databases across government institutions hinder efforts to identify individuals controlling companies.

He emphasized the need for an interconnected national transparency architecture rather than maintaining separate databases. Currently, the CAC operates the beneficial ownership register, while information for entities in Free Trade Zones is managed by the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), and similar data for extractive industries is under the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

Magaji stated that the information sought by these registers is fundamentally the same and proposed that the CAC registry should serve as a central corporate data backbone to improve access and eliminate duplication.