Immaculate Akwanga
Some legal practitioners and businessmen and women in Kumba were recently attended a course on the new business law, the OHADA Uniform Acts, organised by the University of Buea and hosted by the Meme Lawyers' Association -MELA. Holding at the Kumba Council Hall on January 16, 2006, Dr Martha Simo Tumde of the University of Buea, said that the purpose of the workshop is to disseminate information and knowledge on the OHADA Uniform Act to the members of the legal profession, especially the judiciary, legal practitioners and law professors, and also to the business community and the civil society.
"This is because OHADA deals with its Uniform Acts with business law that touch and concern everyone of us, and all business transactions," she said, adding that it is important for people to know and apply this law because it is the law for Africa.
Asked about the reactions of the participants towards this law so far, Dr Tumde said that it is very positive. "They would even want to have many more workshops covering the entirety of these Uniform Acts, and they are willing to continue with these workshops which broaden their knowledge on business law," she added.
Dr Tumde acknowledged the fact that the law is already being applied in Cameroon as all courts and legal practitioners know that it is the law in Cameroon and are studying it.
"Though they are still in the process of studying it, they are trying to implement it as much as they can," she said, adding that the law is a welcome relief because it has replaced outdated and obsolete laws which existed from time immemorial.
It was also an opportunity for her to reassure the business community that it is in for the law that will ensure secure transactions and will bring great improvement to litigations, which actually employs arbitration in settling disputes at a far cheaper rate.
For his part, Barrister Ngenko Daniel, one of the coordinators of the OHADA Law system in Kumba, said that the law is very instructive. "We have learnt a lot especially in respect to the idea of pledges because some of us lawyers have been drafting documents which we referred to as pledges, when they actually had to do with real property."
He said that they have learnt that a pledge deals with movable and not immovable property and that the OHADA law is a treaty which ranks above all local laws, and in a situation where there is conflict between the OHADA law and any local law, OHADA law takes priority. He assured everyone that the law has come to stay and that people should try as much as they can to keep abreast with it in order move ahead.
Participants were schooled on issues like the commercial registry, the recovery of liquidated debts, seizure of wages and salaries and the execution of court judgements.
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