The Company Registry of every country is one of the critical contact points for investors and entrepreneurs, because it formalizes businesses and corporate enterprises.
Accordingly, the need to have a functional and efficient registry cannot be overstated for any economy. Nigeria’s company registry is the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), established by the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 1990 (CAMA), which has been replaced by the CAMA 2020.
Successive Registrars General of the Commission have taken various steps to improve the quality of service delivery by the Commission, which is an income-regulatory generating agency. Until around 2015, when the Company Registration Portal for business registration and regulatory services was launched by the CAC, all processes were undertaken manually, except for the availability of name search, which was digital.
As of 2011, same-day company registrations were successfully executed, albeit at a premium, even with the manual process. Sadly, the Commission has continued on a path of steady decline in service delivery since the end-to-end digitalization process commenced.
CAC’s inefficiency as a reflection of the failure of the Presidential Council on Business
In 2016, the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) was inaugurated by the previous administration to remove bureaucratic constraints to conducting business in Nigeria and create a business-friendly environment through targeted reforms, strategic interventions, and optimized regulatory frameworks.
In this regard, the Commission outlined the various touchpoints for the reforms as follows:
- Business Registration process
- Dealing with construction permits
- Getting electricity
- Registering property
- Getting Credit
- Protecting minority investors
- Paying taxes
- Trading across borders
- Enforcing contracts
- Resolving insolvency
- Trading within Nigeria
- Easy entry and exit of people
Most of the above touchpoints align with the metrics used by the World Bank to assess the ease of doing business in countries across the world.
The first action point (among several others) for reforming the business registration process, as stated on the PEBEC website, is the introduction of an online business registration portal. However, as of 2016, when the PEBEC was inaugurated, the CAC already had a functional online registration portal, which improved the process for registering businesses and undertaking other regulatory services at the time. It therefore comes as a surprise that in 2025, over a decade after the initial launch of CAC’s online portal, users are still unable to enjoy a seamless experience; instead, they are being served frustration daily.
Although several attempts have been made to upgrade the online portal, the outcome has been abysmal. The recent migration to an artificial intelligence-driven portal – intelligent Company Registration Portal (iCRP) has only worsened the situation. There are complaints of registration and regulatory compliance processes stalled for months, payments not reflected, and missing or incorrect data on entity accounts on the portal. For example, an entity with several annual returns filed now shows that no return has been filed. To make things worse, the CAC is focused on revenue generation and has been penalizing users for its own inefficiency and delay.
Apart from the clunky portal, which has undergone a series of upgrades, customer service is virtually non-existent. As a result, aggrieved users of the portal have taken to the CAC’s social media accounts to channel their complaints. Unfortunately, they do not get attention either, and the official mailbox (complaints@cac.gov.ng) is now out of storage space. A letter written by the author to the Registrar-General of the CAC, as far back as February 2025, and delivered both physically and by email, is yet to be replied to.
Way forward
As a matter of urgency, the management of the CAC needs to take the following steps:
- Engage competent experts with proven skills for similar work to build an end-to-end digital platform with the capacity for the volume of data processing and traffic required for such a platform through a transparent and well-publicized bidding process.
- Provide multiple payment options instead of just Remita. Using just one service provider means that any challenge encountered by that provider will impact the process until it is resolved.
- Give waivers when there’s downtime, maintenance, or an ongoing upgrade on the online portal until issues are resolved and the portal is fully functional, rather than penalize businesses for late filing or download of approval documents, which may have been due to the downtime, maintenance, or upgrade.
- Defer the proposed increase in the cost of service until there is a functional and efficient portal and customer service system.
- Overhaul the dysfunctional customer service system and engage trained, competent staff to man that critical aspect of service delivery. Outsourcing can also be considered.
- Deploy social media as a tool for engagement, service delivery, and dissemination of information rather than a digital photo gallery. Instead of blocking users on social media and disabling the comment section of social media platforms, the commission should be customer-centric and deploy all available channels to resolve disputes with dispatch.
Conclusion
The website of the CAC has the following as its vision, mission, and core values:
Vision – to be a world-class company’s registry providing excellent registration and regulatory services.
Mission – to provide registration and regulatory services that meet the expectations of stakeholders for the benefit of the economy.
Core values – Courtesy, Integrity, Dedication, Efficiency
Going by the current state of affairs, the service rendered by the CAC falls far short of all of the above. The Commission has failed woefully to deliver on its vision, mission, and core values. In the same vein, after almost a decade since inception, PEBEC’s goal to make business easy, digital, transparent, and efficient is far from the target, considering the level of chaos and inefficiency at the CAC. Incidentally, the pioneer Executive Secretary of the PEBEC, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, now serves as the Minister for Industry, Trade, and Investment. It is high time that something tangible is done to salvage the CAC from the current quagmire if Nigeria truly seeks to create an enabling business environment and attract investment. Nigeria cannot speak of building a trillion-dollar economy when basic systems and infrastructure remain in the realm of dreams rather than reality.
Teingo Inko-Tariah, Esq., is a Corporate Governance/Compliance Professional. She can be contacted at teingoi@yahoo.com
