Business owners in Nigeria seeking to register businesses or update company details with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) have been left frustrated as the agency’s website has remained inaccessible for at least three days.
Checks by Nairametrics confirmed that the website repeatedly returned a ‘Bad Gateway’ error with code 502, which typically implies that a server acting as a gateway or proxy received an invalid response from another upstream server.
The development comes weeks after the Commission announced a temporary shutdown of its online portal from April 17, 2026, to April 20, 2026, to carry out scheduled maintenance.
What they are saying
A business registration agent had called the attention of Nairametrics to the development. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he lamented that the “CAC portal haven’t been opening since Friday till today.”
- “I tried opening their portal again this morning, and this is the message I keep seeing,” he said in a WhatsApp message, attaching a screenshot of the error.
Nairametrics also received the same error message when it attempted to access the website.
Further checks on social media, particularly the comment section of CAC on X, revealed that other Nigerians are having the same encounter.
A. Lawal Textiles (@SA_Lawal001)
Reacting to the outage, the user criticised the agency for failing to communicate publicly about the issue.
- “The CAC ICRP website is down since yesterday and there was no public address on it by any of your social channels, what an unorganised agency,” the user wrote.
Inilayo Opuofoni (@InilayoOpuofoni)
Another user complained that the outage was preventing users from reserving business names on the portal.
- “Please, check on this, ‘Internal Server error’. We cannot reserve names,” the user wrote while attaching an error screenshot.
Further examination of the comments under CAC post shows that the portal-related problem dates back months.
Nairametrics’ attempt to reach the CAC helpdesk to ascertain the cause of the issues was unsuccessful as the support line failed to connect. Only a repeated computer-generated voice saying, “Welcome while your call is being transferred,” could be heard.
As of the time of filing this report, the CAC has yet to respond to the barrage of complaints on its social media handle.
What you should know
In July last year, CAC announced plans to optimise its portal to guarantee enhanced performance for users.
The announcement came days after the Commission unveiled a new Artificial Intelligence-driven registration portal aimed at simplifying company registration processes and accelerating approvals for businesses in Nigeria.
- However, in April this year, CAC confirmed a security breach involving unauthorised access to parts of its systems and urged users to update their login credentials as a precaution.
- The confirmation followed claims by Dark Web Informer, an anonymous X account, alleging that about 25 million documents were exfiltrated from CAC’s infrastructure.
The recurring issues with the CAC portal could further complicate efforts by small businesses and startups in Nigeria to formalise operations.
