HOW TO REGISTER YOUR BUSINESS NAME WITH THE CORPORATE AFFAIRS COMMISSION (CAC) IN 21 DAYS OR LESS, WITHOUT A LAWYER AND WITH LESS THAN N10,000 (PART 1)

Hi there,

It’s been a while since I posted life changing articles on this blog; I’ve been busy with some personal projects. Well, I’m back now and I say a big thank you for keeping in touch on www.beyobskills.blogspot.com

As our first article for 2014, we are going to be talking on a very important topic here in Nigeria. Which is How To Register Your

Business Name With The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) In 21 Days Or Less, Without A Lawyer And With Less Than N10,000. Are you ready for the ride?

Lets go……..

One of the most important thing small business owners neglect in Nigeria today is proper registration. This is because a good number of them think it’s not important and some others who think it’s important assume it will be a very difficult task.

Why should you register your business with CAC?

Registering your business with CAC is of a very huge importance. Some of which are:

• For one, when it comes to doing serious business, many agencies will never take you serious if your company is not registered.

• Secondly, you might have to discovered that people and that includes you and I, feel more comfortable paying for services and products into a corporate account with the name of an organization than paying into Individual account.

I once missed an important sale a couple of years ago because when my prospect made up his mind to buy, the account number I sent him was an individual account in my name. He thought it too risky because it was a sizable amount involved.

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People feel if the account is in a corporate name, the organization can be traced if the transaction went foul. If you register your company, you can use the documents to open a corporate account with less stress.

Moreover, if you have a business idea and you go ahead and register the business name, even if you spend 2 years perfecting the plan and raising the capital, for it, those 2 years from when the business was registered can count for you as years of experience.

A little about CAC:

The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) was established by the

Companies and Allied matters act, which was promulgated in 1990 to regulate the formation and management of companies in Nigeria. The

CAC is in charge of registering businesses in Nigeria. They have offices all over Nigeria and in this article, I have included the addresses of their offices in different locations in Nigeria, so finding the one nearest to you should be very simple.

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2 Ways Of Registering a Business name With CAC

If you want to register a business name, you can do it in 2 ways.

• One is to engage the services of a lawyer and he will get it done for you with about N10, 000. The trouble is that the next time you want to register another business name; you will have to pay him another N10,000 If you are a serial entrepreneur with many business ideas flowing in you, you will be spending too much money for this when you can actually spend less by understanding the information I am going to share with you here.

• The second way to get your business name registered is to do it yourself. Yes, you can walk into any branch of the corporate affairs commission and you will get your business registered.

The trouble with this is that if you do not know the secrets of going about it, you will spend months trying to get your business name registered. A friend of mine spent over 6 months trying to register his business name because he worked through an agent who really wasted his time and messed him up real bad. This report will show you how to avoid all that.

For the sake of clarity, let me make it clear that this process is to get your business name registered and not a limited liability company or an NGO.

Getting started:

The first step you have to take when you want to register a business in Nigeria is to locate their office that is nearer to you.

HERE ARE SOME CAC OFFICE LOCATIONS IN NIGERIA

LAGOS13

IKEJA: Elephant Cement House, Assbifi Road, Alausa Ikeja

MARINA: 9TH Floor, UBA House, No. 57 Marina-Lagos Island.

RIVERS

112 Aba Road, P/Harcourt, River State

OYO

Premium House, Jericho Road, Eleyele-Ibadan, Oyo State.

EDO

55, Akpakava Street, Benin City, Edo State.

ENUGU

1 Temple Avenue, Off Opara Avenue, Enugu(Behind First Bank).

IMO

7/9 Wetheral Road, Owerri, Imo State.

DELTA

Along Anwai/Illah Okpanam Road, Opp. Ministry Of Works, P.M.B

95095, Asaba-Delta State.

BENUE

37 Barracks Road, Makurdi, Benue State.

KANO

52, Unity Road, Kano.

KADUNA14

22, Bida Road, National Bank Building, Kaduna.

PLATEAU

21, Murtala Mohammed Way, Jos, Plateau State.

SOKOTO

No. 3, Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki Road, Sokoto.

BORNO

No. 25, Sir Kashim Ibrahim Way, Chari House, Maiduguri, Borno State.

ADAMAWA

Galadima, Aminu Way, Jimeta-Yola, Adamawa State.

BAUCHI

Ground Floor, Nicon House, No. 26, Ahmed Abdulkadir Road, Bauchi

State.

AKWA IBOM

131, Udo Umana Road, Uyo- Akwa Ibom State.

CROSS RIVER

No. 10, Calabar Road, Okoi Arikpo House, 3RD Floor, M/M Way By

Central Bank.

ONDO

87, Alagbaka Quarters, Akure.

KWARA

Adama Sa'adu's House, Ahmadu Bello Way, Ilorin, Kwara State.

Once you are ready to register your business name with the corporate affairs commission, then all you need is to follow the step by step process below.

STEP-BY-STEP REGISTRATION PROCESS

Walk in to the nearest branch to you and ask for name reservation5form. It costs just Two Hundred Naira only. You will be given a receipt and a form. On the form, you will be asked to fill in a few

details. Details like...

1. Your Name
2.   Your Address
3.   Your Desired Business Names
4. A Space To Fill The Type Of Business You Want to Register (Choose Enterprises/Business Name)

You will be required to choose two business names. The reason is that if

one is not available, they can reserve the other for you. If none of them is

available, you will need to do it all over again. You will have to pay the

N200 again and you will have to wait for the result.

How long does it take to reserve a name with CAC?

Having been using the Internet for about 8 years now and working as an

Internet Marketing Consultant for some time now, I have had to register a number of domains for websites. It’s more like registering your business name online. It generally takes just a few minutes if you know what you are doing. When I came to register my Business offline, I imagined it would take the same speed I used to do online registrations or just a bit slower. I was shocked to discover I had to wait for almost 2 weeks in this our dotcom age before they could search their database to know if my chosen name was available.

When you ask for a name reservation, it takes about 2 weeks before the results are returned. It is sometimes as fast as one week or 10 days but it generally takes 2 weeks. Now imagine if your chosen business name is not6available, you have to go through that 2 week process again. If the new one is not available as well, you have to go over the process... again... and... again. That is why it takes people a long time to sort out.

We stop here for now, in our next article we continue from here.

Seidu Mustapha

Your Unselfish Business Coach.