•Tinubu
Thousands of Nigerian entrepreneurs seeking to formalise their businesses under the federal government’s free 250,000 business names registration scheme are stuck in a bureaucratic limbo, with complaints of unprocessed applications, failed NIN verifications and irretrievable certificates piling up, even as the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) issued a fresh public notice last weekend reassuring Nigerians the initiative remains free and warning against fraudsters.
The scheme, announced by President Bola Tinubu during the 8th National MSME Awards, allows 250,000 eligible nano, micro and small businesses to obtain CAC business name registration at no cost, with the federal government waiving fees to encourage entrepreneurs to formalise their operations and access funding. Applicants first register on the SMEDAN portal before being directed to the CAC for certificate issuance.
But nearly a year after the CAC and SMEDAN signed the enabling Memorandum of Understanding, users describe a process riddled with technical breakdowns, reports Daily Independent.
On X, Chioma Obinagwam appealed directly to the CAC to “conclude the update on your website promptly,” saying it had been “frustrating and impossible” for over six months to upgrade her business status to a limited liability company.
A user known as “King of two nations” said he holds a SMEDAN certificate but has found no path to complete CAC registration, while Nwideedu Barry Benedict said he cannot even download his SMEDAN certificate to proceed.
Others reported approvals stuck for weeks. Chukwuma Iwube said his business name has awaited approval for nearly two months, while two users, “Favour247” and “Offor1111,” said applications submitted and approved by SMEDAN since July remain pending on the CAC portal despite emails to the commission’s help desk.
Olajide Ajetunmobi flagged a separate technical snag, an “unable to verify NIN” error despite entering accurate details, pointing to possible friction between the CAC’s system and the National Identity Management Commission’s database.
For Nduka Odo, the stakes are more personal.
He said a business name he registered in 2021 under an earlier CBN-sponsored scheme is publicly searchable on CAC’s records but does not reflect on his dashboard, and no certificate has ever been issued, despite the business bearing his full name.
Not every account was negative: Oluwagbemi Mayowa said the process took him just 48 hours, attributing others’ struggles to low public awareness of the scheme rather than the system itself.
The complaints echo problems the CAC has publicly acknowledged before. Registrar- General Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, disclosed in September at a stakeholders’ forum in Kano that the commission was contending with a backlog of 7,000 registration applications, attributing it to the overwhelming volume of applications following the transition to an AI-driven portal.
A prolonged outage on the iCRP portal in May further stalled new registrations, with the commission normally processing an average of 10,000 requests daily before such system shocks, and no official timeline was given for restoration.
Magaji has said the commission inherited an overstretched registration portal unable to cope with rising demand from compliance drives such as mandatory POS business registration and annual returns filing, and has repeatedly pledged reforms to eliminate delays.
In its notice signed August 15, 2026, CAC management reiterated that MSMEs already in SMEDAN’s database without CAC registration automatically qualify for the free drive urged eligible entrepreneurs to register only through portal.smedan. gov.ng, and stressed that the commission will not request payment for the exercise, cautioning the public against fraudsters offering to “fast-track” applications for a fee.
For now, the gap between the scheme’s promise and its delivery leaves Nigeria’s small business owners — the very group the initiative was designed to formalise — caught between two portals, each pointing them back to the other.
