Small businesses frustrated as CAC fails to restore online services

Business owners in Nigeria are frustrated because the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) website has not been working for several days.

The website has been showing a “502 Bad Gateway” error, which usually means the server is not responding properly. This has made it difficult for people to register businesses or update company details online.

Checks confirmed that the problem has lasted at least three days. Some users said the site has been unstable since Friday, while others reported they could not even reserve business names.

CAC had earlier shut down its portal briefly in April 2026 for maintenance. The agency also promised improvements after introducing a new AI-powered registration system to make business registration faster.

However, the platform has continued to face problems. In April, CAC also confirmed a security breach and asked users to change their passwords as a safety measure. There were also claims that millions of documents may have been accessed illegally, though CAC addressed the issue at the time.

Users on social media have criticised the agency for not communicating clearly about the current outage.

As of now, CAC has not given an official explanation for the latest downtime, and its support lines are not going through.

The repeated failures are making it harder for small businesses and startups in Nigeria to register and operate formally.