By Joy Odor, Reportcircle News
Nigeria’s corporate regulatory system crossed a historic threshold on Monday as the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) marked 35 years of existence with a bold declaration: the era of analogue governance is over, and artificial intelligence has become the new engine of business regulation in Africa’s largest economy.
At a packed anniversary ceremony in Abuja, the Registrar-General and Chief Executive Officer of the Commission, Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, unveiled a sweeping technology-driven transformation that has repositioned the CAC from a paper-bound bureaucracy into a 24-hour digital institution with global reach.
What began in 1991 as a single office in Area 11, Garki, Abuja, where Nigerians travelled from every corner of the country to file documents manually has evolved into a fully digital registry operating round-the-clock, serving entrepreneurs anywhere in the world at the click of a button.
“This is not a celebration of age,” Magaji declared. “It is a celebration of purpose, reform and resilience. From one office to the world, from queues to clicks, CAC has rewritten its story.”
Magaji painted a stark picture of the Commission’s early years: manual processes, paper files stacked endlessly, and a system constrained by geography, cost and time.
Today, he said, those limitations have been dismantled.
Businesses can now be registered online without physical visits, dramatically reducing the cost and friction of formalising enterprises. Turnaround time has been slashed to as little as 10 days, making CAC one of the fastest corporate registries on the continent.
That digital leap, he stressed, has fundamentally altered Nigeria’s ease-of-doing-business landscape.
The centrepiece of the anniversary was CAC’s aggressive embrace of artificial intelligence, a move Magaji described as “imperative, not optional.”
The numbers tell the story. From fewer than 100 registration requests in its early years, CAC now processes nearly 10,000 business registrations daily.
Its call centres and email platforms handle an average of 5,000 enquiries every week.
“No organisation can sustainably manage this scale with manual processes,” Magaji said. “Only AI offers the speed, accuracy and efficiency required.”
AI systems, he explained, are now being embedded across the Commission’s hundreds of operational processes from customer support to data verification infusing intelligence into service delivery while tightening safeguards against abuse.
The CAC boss acknowledged that the reform journey was not without disruption.
The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, strained productivity and service delivery across the public sector.
“But we adapted, we learned, and we emerged stronger,” he noted, thanking stakeholders for their patience during that turbulent period.
A major highlight of the event was the signing of a Letter of Collaboration between CAC and Mogu, a global technology company, aimed at strengthening the Commission’s digital backbone.
According to Magaji, the partnership has already improved platform stability, boosted system performance and expanded internet-based services over the past quarter, positioning CAC as a global reference point in digital business registration and data management.
The Commission also unveiled a redesigned website www.cac.gov.ng featuring new digital tools designed to make regulation more transparent and user-friendly.
Chief among them is AI Notifier, an interactive feature that allows users to ask questions directly from CAC laws, rules and guidelines, turning complex regulations into accessible, real-time information.
Speakers at the event emphasised that CAC’s role now goes beyond regulation to economic enablement.
The Commission reaffirmed its alignment with the Federal Government’s reform agenda, particularly in advancing transparency, efficiency and quality service delivery.
They stressed the need to strengthen inclusiveness within the public system, improve funding for business administration and deepen collaboration between government, institutions and citizens.
“Sustainable progress,” one speaker noted, “can only be achieved through shared responsibility and effective use of public resources.”
As tributes poured in, the recurring theme was resilience. While many public institutions struggle or decline with age, CAC, speakers said, is expanding and reinventing itself.
“When we assumed office, our first priority was transformation,” a senior official said. “We are in the AI era, and the only way forward is to embrace it fully.”
AI, they added, will not only simplify processes but also make system manipulation far more difficult, empowering staff with sophisticated tools to work faster, smarter and more securely.
A Signal to Nigeria and the World
As the ceremony drew to a close, one message rang clear: CAC is no longer catching up with global standards it is competing with them.
“At 35,” Magaji concluded, “CAC is thriving, not surviving. We are building a future-ready institution that serves Nigeria and stands confidently on the global stage.”
For Nigeria’s business community, the signal is unmistakable: the corporate registry has entered a new digital age and there is no turning back.
