The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has removed over 400,000 inactive and non-compliant companies from its official register in a major clean-up exercise aimed at boosting transparency, strengthening investor confidence and sanitising Nigeria’s business environment.
The Registrar-General of the CAC, Mr. Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, disclosed this in Abuja during activities marking the Commission’s 35th anniversary, where he highlighted the agency’s transformation from a manual, location-bound registry into a fully digital corporate regulator serving Nigeria’s estimated 250 million population around the clock.
Magaji explained that the delisted firms were largely shell companies that had failed to file annual returns and were no longer engaged in active business, noting that their continued presence on the register posed risks to economic integrity and investor trust.
According to him, the decision to remove the companies was taken to ensure that investors can rely on the credibility of the CAC’s records. “We did it to encourage confidence in our investors, so they can know we have a credible register at the Corporate Affairs Commission,” he said.
He added that the exercise was part of wider digital and regulatory reforms that have repositioned the CAC as Nigeria’s only fully digital, end-to-end government agency, allowing business registration and corporate filings to be completed without physical visits to its offices.
Magaji noted that the Commission now delivers services “anywhere, anytime,” a development he said has significantly improved Nigeria’s ease-of-doing-business profile while reducing barriers to formalising enterprises across the country.
