Legal Professionals Raise Concerns Over CAC’s AI Platform

The Corporate Affairs Commission’s (CAC) new AI-powered registration portal has been plagued by technical issues, causing frustration and challenges for businesses in Nigeria. Many lawyers also claim that the issue has raised concerns about the ease of doing business in Nigeria, with potential investors likely to be deterred by the system issues.

Despite the commission’s promise to streamline the business registration process, lawyers say the portal has made it difficult for businesses to operate efficiently.

Tech Changes

Last month, the commission announced the introduction of a new AI-powered registration portal. At the time, Hussaini Magaji, registrar-general/chief executive officer of CAC, said the portal represents a complete overhaul of the commission’s existing Company Registration Portal (CRP).

Mr Magaji stated that name reservation was now poised to be as easy as opening an email account where instant approvals were granted for available names. According to him, the system was intelligently built to suggest alternatives for selection and immediate approval.

He added that another special feature introduced is to allow business registration with only National Identification Number (NIN) of a director or proprietor, stating that CAC’s target time for business registration was now under 30 minutes to generate certificate and deliver to the customers email is subject to real-time NIN verification.

However, lawyers who act as registration agents have observed that the portal has been inaccessible for weeks, with customers unable to perform critical tasks, including the inability to conduct name searches, register business names, file post-incorporation documents, and submit annual returns.

Frustrating Process

Users expressed frustration with the commission’s handling of the situation, citing a lack of transparency and communication about the issues and the timeline for resolution, speculating that the commission’s actions may frustrate the system and justify the proposed fee hike scheduled to take effect in August.

“We have been facing the issue for over a week now. We just woke up one day and discovered that the whole portal has been changed and we discovered that they are trying to introduce AI we were not informed about initially,” one lawyer said. “We can access it but we can’t do anything,” he continued.

“It is affecting the ease of doing business. I have someone that gave me a job and for over a week I can’t even do the registration. If you are coming into the country for any investment and you want to register your company and your lawyer is telling you that he cannot get a new reservation for you within 7 days. There is nothing like ease of doing business again in this situation,” Mr Ogunsanya, a lawyer, said.

Unresponsive Systems

Another lawyer, Olalekan Oladapo, recounted his experience with the portal, highlighting the difficulties he faced in accessing the portal and registering a business name.

“I think like every other system in Nigeria, when people are going through a transition process, people have a lot of challenges. Personally, I have encountered a lot of challenges in getting through the process. So, the first thing that happened to me, the first challenge is, I discovered that I could not access my portal, I could not log in, and all that, it was frustrating.

“Last Friday the commission issued a belated notice that it will be upgrading over the weekend, and normal activities will resume on Monday 14 July but as I speak to you now, nothing can be done on the portal, even payments are not going through. No new company registration can be done now, as name search/availability can not be successfully conducted,” Mr. Oladopo added.

No End in Sight?

The problems continue to persist, with users speculating whether the Commission is moving towards hiking its fees. “I wanted to pay so that I would not be caught with the new increment. Because my client has already paid. I charge the fees from the current situation. We don’t know whether this is a deliberate plan on the part of CAC for not making the payment platform working,” a lawyer said.

Arome Okwori, a Jos-based lawyer, expressed concern that the situation may deter investors, who may be unable to register their companies or conduct business in Nigeria.

“There should be a human face to this thing. AI or not, what we are saying is people are suffering and you are adding to the pain of the people. It is very disappointing and worrisome because the issue may discourage potential investors,” he said.

Another lawyer, Obinna Orji, said: “Recently their portal is having some glitches. Loading up of the portal, unsuccessful remita transactions due to the glitches, you can’t make payment for filling fees.”

Dominic Inyang, the Director, Public Affairs, Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, acknowledged the issues, noting that the system is now working optimally.

“We have some glitches but it’s now working optimally. Yes, there were some issues, this is technology; it is not man-made. Our system is up and running now,” he said.