The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) says it is set to deploy an Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent to address a backlog of 7,000 company registration applications and ease the service delays currently frustrating business owners.
Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, Registrar-General/CEO, CAC, disclosed this on Monday in Kano during a stakeholders’ forum.
He explained that the AI agents will process requests across compliance, registry, and customer service functions with greater speed and accuracy, helping to resolve challenges that have slowed service delivery in recent months.
“In a bid to tackle the backlog of 7,000 registration applications, an AI agent was in the pipeline to handle requests across compliance, registry, and customer service with speed and accuracy,” the Commission said in a statement on its X handle.
Magaji acknowledged that the Commission’s transition to an AI-driven registration portal has been bumpy, with customers experiencing delays in approvals, particularly for services not covered in the first phase of the digital deployment. According to him, the delays stemmed largely from the overwhelming number of applications the system has had to process.
To further boost efficiency, he said the CAC will also deploy AI to manage the high volume of daily inquiries. The system currently receives no fewer than 3,000 emails per day, but the AI tool being developed will be able to read and comprehend those messages within a minute, detect duplicates, and reroute them to the right departments for faster resolution.
“Problems have been identified, and solutions are already in motion,” Magaji assured.
In June, the CAC launched an AI-powered registration portal designed to transform Nigeria’s business environment by simplifying company registration and accelerating approvals. The new portal, which represents a complete overhaul of the Company Registration Portal (CRP), offers instant name approvals and intelligent suggestions for alternative names when preferred choices are unavailable.
Magaji had described the system as making name reservation “as simple as opening an email account.” However, many Nigerians have continued to face difficulties on the portal, ranging from payments not reflecting to failure in document submissions, issues that contributed to the backlog the Commission is now trying to clear.
Despite the challenges, the CAC announced in July that the portal was already processing more than 11,000 transactions daily, a milestone it described as a major leap in automation.
