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Nigeria to encourage transparency in governance: official

Xinhua, October 27, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Nigerian government on Wednesday said is committed to its policy of exposing the rightful owners of businesses, to encourage transparency, accountability and probity in governance, an official said Wednesday.

The purpose of the policy was to unravel the owners of businesses registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Joe Abah, the Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) told reporters in Abuja, the nation's capital city.

Abah said there are instances where ownership of companies hide behind several companies; some of them are offshore.

The initiative would also make public servants to be committed on the need for open government and transparency, Abah said, noting that some government officials hide quite a number of complex chains of owners of businesses to perpetrate corruption.

"In a lot of contracts awarded by the government, the real owners may even be civil servants or National Assembly members but have used different names for the registration of the companies," he added.

The director-general advised Nigerians to begin to look inward by making public the real owners of businesses as this would help reduce corruption in the system.

He said doing this would make things more transparent because most company owners hid behind several companies to operate.

Abah said the initiative would also allow for an open register at the CAC where information about owners of companies would be made transparent. Endit