Registering Your Business With Nigeria’s CAC

Do you want to start a business or company in Nigeria that you know has a huge potential of impacting the economy positively? Then you must consider doing a business name registration. Registering your company makes you full legitimate business owner with a unique name, thereby stopping other businesses from having the same name as you own.
There are many benefits of having a legally registered business. It builds trust among your clients and might help you bid for contracts from government or big companies.

CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission)

This is the main body authorized by the federal government, in charge of business  name registration in Nigeria. To go about registering your business, you will likely go through this body to get things done. We will look at the procedures it takes to get your business registered. As of this writing, there are two primary ways to get your business registered by CAC:

1. The Manual Process
2. The Digital Process

Manual Process Of Business Name Registration

This is the normal hectic, old process that you will definitely go through to get your business name registered. Below are the steps:

1.  Go to any Corporate Affairs Commission Office closest to you and submit your business name for Name Search.  You will be given a name reservation form for N500.
Fill the form using capital letters in the data you are providing which include your name, your address and the names you intend to register, tick the type of company category you want to register as. You have option one and two – Option one is your first choice name, while option two is the alternative name in case the first choice isn’t available.
You will have to make a Photocopy of the filled form before submission, you will use this photocopy as a means for them to locate your form later.
After submission of the form, come back in 7 – 14 days to check the availability of your business name. If your business name is not available, you will repeat the whole process afresh to get a name that has not been taken. To avoid this scenario, don’t go for popular phrases, choose something unique.
2.  Once your business name is available, you will be provided with some forms to fill, of which you will need to attach two passport photographs and provide any other relevant document like business partner details, phone numbers etc
3. You will be asked to pay an official fee of 10,000 naira and your business certificate should be out in two weeks.

Digital Process Of Business Name Registration

The good news is, business name registration can now be done easily from CAC’s website: https://new.cac.gov.ng. You can now register your business from the comfort of your room, all you need is a computer with internet connection. You easily create an account on their website, search for Company name availability, register your company in a matter of minutes.
Once you’re on the CAC website, do the following:
Click “Create account”
Fill in the required information needed to create the account, after that click the Create Account button.
Check your email for confirmation and the completion of the signup process. The email you received should contain the user name you registered with and a default password which you will be required to change later at login.
After that you will be redirected to the login page,
Enter your username and password and click login, when that is done, you will be asked to enter your new password twice. Do that and click save.
Next you will have to answer a security question presented to you or will have to create one yourself (this will be used for your password recovery, if you eventually forget it)
After entering it, click the Save button. You’ve successfully created an account with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
Go to the homepage and type your company name in the two text fields labeled name option 1 and name option 2 and click Proceed. You are now applying for name search and checking its availability.
Now review the company information and fill in the additional information text fields and click on Next. This brings up the payment page which has different payment options. Select your preferred payment option , the commonly used option is Pay with card online option (where you pay with your Debit card).

Note down the Transaction reference ID at the top left side of the page. It’s very important.
If you selected the pay with card option, you are likely to see where you are asked to select your debit card type, then click the Proceed button. Now fill in the card details. The payment you just made above was for business name reservation.

To register your company, go to the homepage and you should be back to where you started your Company-name search and registration, which is here….

Down at the left you will see a link called Register a company, click on it. Enter your availability code, if your name search and registration was successful, you will be given this code. Key it in and proceed.
Now the approved company name will be displayed, beside it at the right, you will see an Action dropdown box. Click it and click on register. Fill in this form correctly and click on continue.
Next fill in the company information.
Click the green button to proceed.
Click the “Add a director” button to add the details of the company’s directors.
Click Continue.
Next add the details of your business/company`s director and click “+ Save director” A list of all the directors you added will be displayed. You can delete or edit the details anytime.
To proceed, click “continue”
Next fill in the resulting form for the secretary of your company.
Next is the form for the allotment of shares (that’s where you add shareholders of the company). Click on “add new shareholders” and fill in the details from the resulting form. You can also add any of the directors as shareholders. After that, a list of all the shareholders added will appear. You can always delete or edit them.
Click on continue.

On the next page, add the memorandum and articles of association. To do this, click on “Add an object” and fill in the corresponding information in the fields that appear.
A list of the added articles of Association is displayed at the lower part of the page, to delete any of them scroll to the object and click on “Action” there will be a drop-down menu, select “delete”. After adding the articles of Association click “Continue” to proceed
Next click on the pointer on the right side of each document to select the number of document you need.
Select and click continue.
A preview of your company registration will now be displayed, go through the whole preview for clarity.
You can click on “Go back” to return to previous pages and make corrections or click on“ Proceed to Payment” at the bottom right of the page to continue.
Lastly…..
Make your payment just the same way you did above during the name reservation process. Select a payment option and click on “Next”. Note the Transaction Reference ID and you’re done