What changed at the CAC in 2025–2026: a summary for business owners

Executive summary

• The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) replaced its legacy registration system in mid-2025 with a new AI-powered platform — the Intelligent Company Registration Portal (iCRP) — targeting 30-minute end-to-end company registrations. Throughput surged on paper while practitioners reported payment-verification failures and stuck applications through Q3 2025.
• A revised fee schedule took effect on 1 October 2025 after two postponements. Headline registration fees held flat. Post-incorporation services, same-day filings, and the penalty regime moved meaningfully.
• The CAC partnered with SMEDAN in September 2025 to register 250,000 micro and small enterprises at zero CAC cost — the largest single formalisation push in recent memory.
• Three structural shifts now touch every newly registered business: NIN is mandatory and verified live against NIMC; TIN is generated automatically at registration; and the federal tax administrator was renamed from FIRS to the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) under the 2025 tax reform.

The headline number

In July 2025, the new iCRP processed 8,000 name reservations in a single day — a volume the CAC said previously took "a minimum of two weeks" under the old system. That ratio — 8,000-a-day versus 8,000-a-fortnight — is the single cleanest measure of the reform's ambition. It is also the cleanest measure of how high the bar now sits for delivery: every miss on the new portal is measured against that headline.

The Commission reported 245,000 new entity registrations in 2025, roughly 15% above 2024. The direction is consistent: faster, more digital, more affordable for the smallest businesses, with tighter identity verification at the front door. Execution has been bumpier than the press releases suggest.

What the iCRP transition actually changed

The Intelligent Company Registration Portal launched at the 2025 Stakeholders' Forum in Port Harcourt and replaced the older Company Registration Portal (CRP), which the Commission itself said captured "only about 30% of its services." Registrar-General Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, framed the goal explicitly: registration in 30 minutes from application to certificate.

What is genuinely new:

• NIN-only registration. A single verified NIN is now sufficient front-end identification for a director or proprietor, replacing the older requirement to upload multiple ID documents.
• Real-time NIN verification. The portal queries the NIMC database directly. Applications where the name or date of birth does not match a citizen's NIN record exactly are rejected immediately.
• AI-assisted name reservation. The system suggests available alternatives when a proposed name is taken — in principle removing the back-and-forth that used to add days.
• Two-factor authentication on transactions. Post-incorporation changes now require OTP verification, intended to block unauthorised director and share-capital changes.
• A CAC mobile app, promised for Q4 2025.

What didn't work cleanly. The Nigerian Bar Association published a member advisory in September 2025 acknowledging widespread portal difficulties, after the CAC wrote to the NBA admitting "the transition has caused inconveniences." TechCabal reported in July 2025 on advisers handling SME registrations who could not verify payments to the new portal despite money being deducted from accounts. The Commission set itself a public target of 95% portal stabilisation by 7 September 2025; practitioner feedback through Q4 remained mixed.

The revised fee schedule (1 October 2025)

The Commission first announced a fee review for 1 August 2025, then postponed twice to allow portal stabilisation. The revised schedule took effect on 1 October 2025.

Headline fees for the most common services held flat or moved modestly. Business name registration remained at ₦10,000. Private company incorporation at up to ₦1 million share capital remained at ₦10,000 for small companies and ₦20,000 for public companies. Name reservation stayed at ₦500. Annual returns held at ₦3,000 for business names and ₦5,000 for companies.

The increases concentrated in post-incorporation and specialised services. Same-day filings now cost ₦20,000–₦50,000 depending on entity type. Voluntary striking-off goes up to ₦100,000 for public companies. Several post-incorporation filings are now standardised at ₦25,000.

The penalty regime also clarified: ₦150/day for business name late filings, ₦250/day for small companies, ₦500/day for non-small private companies, plus one-off penalties of ₦5,000–₦10,000. A business name ignoring annual returns for one year now accumulates roughly ₦55,000–₦60,000 in penalties — six times the original registration cost.

The SMEDAN partnership: 250,000 free registrations

In September 2025, the CAC and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency announced a joint initiative to register 250,000 micro and small enterprises at zero CAC cost. The scheme covers business name registrations only — not limited companies — and is administered through portal.smedan.gov.ng.

Why it matters: 250,000 registrations is roughly equivalent to a full year of normal CAC throughput. Even if a meaningful share of those enterprises never file annual returns or progress to formal banking, the move pulls a substantial slice of Nigeria's informal economy into the public register for the first time. Press reporting suggested further free registration cycles in 2026.

The complication is downstream. The free scheme does not address the larger compliance problem — most newly registered enterprises lapse on their first annual return. The revised penalty regime above is the receiving end of that gap.

The compliance environment around registration

Three reforms outside the CAC itself touch every newly registered business.

Tax administrator renamed. Under the 2025 tax reform legislation, the Federal Inland Revenue Service became the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS). Stamp duty on share capital — approximately ₦8,500 on the first ₦1 million, 0.75% thereafter — is now paid to the NRS.

Automatic TIN generation. From 2026, the Tax Identification Number is generated when you register with the CAC and delivered alongside your certificate or by email. The previous requirement to apply separately at the Joint Tax Board has been eliminated for most registrations.

PSC disclosure with teeth. Persons with Significant Control — anyone holding 5% or more of shares or voting rights, or wielding substantial influence — must be disclosed at registration and updated on change. Non-disclosure carries penalties under CAMA 2020 that the Commission has signalled it will enforce.

How Nigeria compares

The World Bank's Business Ready (B-READY) framework, which replaced the Doing Business rankings, is in its three-year rollout (2024–2026). Nigeria has not yet received a comprehensive B-READY score, so direct cross-country comparison on Business Entry is incomplete.

Where directional comparisons are available, Ghana — the most frequently benchmarked West African peer — scored 72% on financial services in its 2025 B-READY assessment but lagged at 34% on market competition. Ghana's Registrar-General's Department offers online incorporation in 1–3 working days, comparable in headline timing to Nigeria's old CRP and slower than the iCRP's 30-minute target when that target is hit.

The honest read: Nigeria's reform direction is more aggressive than its regional peers' on the digital front, but the implementation gap flagged in B-READY 2024 — where regulation outpaces public service delivery — is precisely what Nigerian SMEs experienced through the iCRP transition. Reform on paper, friction in practice.

What to watch next

1. Portal stabilisation through H1 2026. Whether iCRP delivers consistent under-day registrations or continues to require manual intervention will define real ease-of-doing-business for the next reform cycle. Track the CAC's monthly registration statistics on cac.gov.ng (currently last updated 2022) and the NBA's practitioner advisories.
2. The next SMEDAN free registration cycle. If announced, expect competition for slots. The original September 2025 scheme allocated 250,000 places. Subsequent cycles will signal how seriously the government weights formalisation against the Commission's own fee revenue.
3. NRS stamp duty integration. Whether stamp duty on share capital is fully automated through the iCRP — paid in one step at registration — or remains a separate NRS process will determine whether the 30-minute registration claim holds for limited companies, where stamp duty is currently the slowest piece.

Source: CAC fee schedule, penalties section. Each bar is daily default penalty × 365 days, plus the listed one-off penalty for that entity type. Figures do not include the original unpaid annual return (₦3,000 for business names, ₦5,000 for companies), reinstatement fees if struck off (₦25,000 for business names, up to ₦100,000 for public companies), or any cumulative penalties from earlier missed years.