NIN Now Compulsory For Business Registration – FG

The federal government has announced that National Identification Number (NIN) will now be compulsory for any sort of business registration.

This was disclosed by the registrar of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Alhaji Garba Abubakar.

The registrar who spoke in Abuja during the monthly reform seminar organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reform said “If you don’t have a NIN, it means you can’t register your company”. 

While justifying the adoption of NIN, he noted that unlike other means of identification, NIN has an improved security measure that can not be easily compromised. 

Alhaji Abubakar used the occasion to highlight some of the reforms which the Corporate Affairs Commission has introduced to enhance service delivery to Nigerians.

According to the registrar, the commission has introduced several measures that have reduced the period of company registration to 24 hours.  

“As such, we register an average of 2,000 companies every week,” he said. 

However, the registrar was quick to add that registered companies should not shy away from filing their tax returns. 

“But it’s not just enough to register, you have to file your returns,” he added.

In addition, the CAC boss stated that the commission has added new types of registration which include limited partnerships (LP) and limited liability partnerships (LLP). 

He noted that both LP and LLP give entrepreneurs and law firms additional options of ownership while making registration. 

The registrar disclosed that CAC had to rebuild its registration portal to enable registration from anywhere in the world. 

“Similarly, with the coming of the Act, the CAC registration portal was completely rebuilt to allow companies to transact on it from anywhere,” he said.

He noted that the passage and subsequent presidential assent to the CAMA 2020 has changed the modus operandi of the commission. 

Investors King could recall that the amended Companies and Allied Matters Acts 2020 which repeals CAMA Act 1990 introduced a number of changes to promote the ease of doing business in Nigeria.