New business registrations, name reservations, and corporate filings across Nigeria have ground to a halt as the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) online portal remains heavily hit by a persistent digital outage.
The portal, which was upgraded in late 2025 with an automated Artificial Intelligence-driven system designed to approve registrations in under 30 minutes, is currently returning severe gateway errors.
Entrepreneurs, legal practitioners, and corporate registration agents have expressed deep frustration over their inability to access the Commission’s automated portal, which has been throwing “502 Bad Gateway” and “Internal Server Error” messages for days.
The current crisis follows a string of technical vulnerabilities plaguing the commission’s infrastructure. In mid-April, the CAC temporarily shut down its database following a confirmed cybersecurity breach that exposed limited sections of its data systems.
While the agency introduced tighter security measures, including mandatory password resets and Google Authenticator multi-factor authentication (MFA), the system has continued to experience intermittent breakdowns, culminating in this week’s total lockout.
For Nigeria’s vibrant startup ecosystem and small business sector, the downtime is proving costly.
Already, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has launched an investigation into a major dark web security breach involving CAC data.
An accredited registration agent in Lagos, who simply gave his name George, said: “We are completely stranded. Clients want to open corporate bank accounts, secure tech domain names, and execute contracts, but we can’t even get past the landing page to reserve a name. The silence from the commission is deafening.”
As of yesterday, the CAC helpdesk lines remained unreachable, leaving thousands of MSMEs in legal and financial limbo.
Neither the Registrar-General, Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, nor the CAC’s official media channels have released an official timeline for when the iCRP portal will return online, sparking widespread anxiety among stakeholders.
With the commission processing an average of 10,000 requests daily before these system shocks, the economic backlog is expected to take weeks to clear once the portal is fully restored.
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