The Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Hussaini Ishaq-Magaji (SAN), has assured business owners that the commission is working to eliminate delays in company registration and other services through digital reforms.
Speaking on Monday at the CAC Stakeholders’ Forum in Kano, which was attended by lawyers, business owners, and representatives of the EFCC and ICPC, Ishaq-Magaji said the commission had inherited an overstretched registration portal that could not cope with the rising demands triggered by the mandatory registration of Point-of-Sale (PoS) operators and annual returns filing.
He explained that the situation created huge backlogs and placed unnecessary pressure on both customers and staff.
“Our call centre and operational departments receive no fewer than 3,000 emails daily, with fewer than 100 staff attending to them. This model is not sustainable and it is not fair to our customers or our staff. That is why we resolved to change it for good,” he said.
The registrar-general further explained that the commission had introduced an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered portal capable of processing and routing thousands of customer requests within seconds.
According to him, the new system, launched in June, has reduced the time for business name registration to less than 10 minutes.
“Anywhere you are, without knowing anyone in CAC or paying a middleman, you can register a business name and get your certificate instantly in less than 10 minutes. That is the new Nigeria we are building,” he said.
He, however, admitted that other services, such as limited liability company and incorporated trustee registrations, were still experiencing delays due to about 7,000 pending applications being handled by only 63 registry staff.
Ishaq-Magaji assured stakeholders that the next phases of the digital reforms would address the remaining gaps, stressing that technology was now central to CAC’s operations.
Also speaking, Ahmed Abubakar, Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ungogo branch, hailed the reforms, describing them as a “remarkable achievement.”
Similarly, Usman Umar-Fari, Chairman of the NBA Kano branch, urged the CAC to encourage companies to fulfill their corporate social responsibilities and create more opportunities for lawyers.
NAN