The National Superintendent of Kingsway International Christian Centre in Nigeria Pastor Femi Faseru has said his church has always complied with the Company And Allied Matters Act before the recent amendment.
Faseru made the disclosure in an interview on Channels Television monitored by Church Times on Friday, August 21
He said KICC Nigeria has always complied and had always submitted its yearly accounts to the Corporate Affairs Commission.
He, however, said the updated version of the act which was recently signed into law by President Mohammadu Buhari is off the cuff, adding that “Government and the church need to sit together and look at the grey arrears of the act and reach a consensus.
He said even in the UK, what the government agency does is to regulate not to control. “When we had issues in our headquarters in the UK church, the government agency there did not interfere in the spiritual matters of the church.
They were only concerned with the issues of governance and when they found out that we were not culpable after their investigations, they allowed us to go. Nobody is averse to regulation. What I think the church is against is control. You can’t control a body you know little about.”
Faseru said, “At the moment when you talk about sacking the trustees, who will constitute the interim managers. What will be the extent of the involvement of the managers? This is not exactly what happens in other countries. In the case of our church in the UK, when the interim managers stepped they were not involved with issues of spirituality.”
Faseru: CAMA will pose problem for govt
The KICC pastor wondered if the government is ready to handle the responsibility that comes with the act. “The question we should be asking is, does the government have the workforce that comes with the revised act. There are thousands of churches all over. Does the government have the workforce to manage the churches all over the country? With the Act, every single church has to have its own trusteeship. That is the number one problem CAMA could pose for the government.”
Faseru said, “Already, there is a deficit of trust between the government and the church. The Church does not trust the sincerity of the government, so it may well be difficult for the church to trust the government in the case of CAMA. When you talk about sacking the churches for suspicion of misconduct for replacement with interim managers, who will be the interim managers. What are they going to be doing when they come in? Would the stakeholders involved in the interim management?”
He counselled that the government should step down the execution of the law and the grey areas should be well defined so that trust can be built between the church and the government. Once that is done, the church will also need to make some adjustment. The churches need to be regulated. I agree with that. But the government should not be involved in the issues of spirituality. It will not work.”
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