By Khalid Idris Doya
Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi has observed that the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as the sole custodian of business formalisation and corporate regulation occupies a foundational space in the economic architecture of Nigeria.
The Governor who noted that the commission's institutional health directly correlates with economic vitality of the country, commended the visionary management team for the remarkable transformation the commission has recorded, thus from manual registries to advanced digital platforms and now actively pioneering artificial intelligence to achieve world-class results.
Senator Bala Mohammed was speaking Thursday while declaring open, the 2026 CAC annual retreat being held at the Ahmadu Bello International Conference Centre, (ICC), Bauchi where he also observed that the commission's rapid name reservations and swift certificate issuance is highly commendable.
Governor Bala added, "By actively dismantling obsolete structures to build customer-centric corporate registry, the CAC is significantly easing the challenges of searching and managing business enterprises in Nigeria with accurate data, anti-corruption insulation and ease of doing business generally".
Mohammed recalled that his administration's governance agenda is anchored on the 'My Bauchi Project blueprint', a roadmap that sought to build massive infrastructure, enhance social services and aggressively stimulate a prosperous economic environment, rallying around the private sector.
"To break free from the reliance on federal allocations, our administration is systematically opening up the state’s abundant agricultural, solid mineral and tourism potentials to the private sector. Furthermore, in our drive towards ensuring ease of doing business, we have taken several measures, which includes the institutionalisation of reforms to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks and foster public-private cooperation".
Senator Bala told the retreat that his administration similarly took stringent measures to eliminate multiple taxation and streamline fees and levies for entrepreneurs, as it empowered the Bauchi State Investment Promotion Agency to function as a seamless one-stop shop for local and international investors.
"The state has major economic engagements, including the high-level State Economic Investment Summit in 2025 that secured about billions of dollars multi-sectoral Memoranda of Understanding spanning agriculture, solid minerals and energy infrastructure".
"From constructing over 3,000 roads, over 10,000 classrooms, over 1,000 functional clinics, we have moved from the kind of traditional institution that we are to a modern state that is competing healthily with our counterpart at the subnational level. We are not, however, mindful of the fact that public policy can only succeed if businesses can register and organise transparently", he further stated.
The Chairman, Governing Board of the CAC, Senator Ibrahim Mohammed Ida has earlier in a keynote address said that the Renewed Hope agenda of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu demanded the commission to over that 200 million Nigerians at scale, efficiently, without bias, without delay and without the loopholes associated with corruption.
"What does AI at scale mean for us at CAC? Let me break it into four practical pillars. The first is efficiency at scale. AI must help us to reduce the time it takes to register a company from days to minutes. It must assist our staff to clear the backlog automatically, verify names, detect similar names, and pre-screen documents".
Senator Ida, also Wazirin Katsina said, "Our goal should be to register a company in 24 hours or tell the customer within two hours why it cannot be registered. The second is staff at scale. This is about data integrity. AI can help us detect fraudulent and shell companies, duplicate directors and Beneficial Ownership concealment".
"It can help us clean our data so that when other institutions like Bank of Industry, FIRS, which is now Federal Revenue Service, or any foreign investor queries the CAC database, they get accurate and real-time information. A trusted registry powered by AI is capable of attracting massive investment. The third one is access to scale".
The CAC board chairman explained that over 70% of Nigerian businesses are informal, most are in rural areas, with many having no computer literacy, saying however that AI-powered chatbots in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Pidgin and any other Nigerian language may come in future to guide a fertilizer in Katsina or a fashion designer in Bauchi to register from and with their phones.
In his goodwill message, the Emir of Bauchi, Dr. Rilwanu Sulaiman Adamu, commended the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) for its vital contribution to Nigeria’s economic development.
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