The Corporate Affairs Commission has commenced its sixth round of company strike-offs, placing approximately 100,000 registered Nigerian businesses at risk of deregistration for failing to meet statutory filing obligations under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020.
A public notice issued on 15 July 2026 and published on the commission’s official website gives affected companies 90 days to regularise their records or be removed from Nigeria’s official corporate register.
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What the affected companies must do
Companies on the Batch 6 list are required to file all outstanding annual returns and submit information on Persons with Significant Control — also referred to as beneficial ownership information — within the 90-day window. Annual returns are a mandatory legal requirement under CAMA 2020, confirming that a company remains operational and compliant with its regulatory obligations. Businesses that do not file are presumed inactive or in default and become subject to removal.
The names of all 100,000 affected companies have been published on the CAC’s official website. Businesses that complete their filings should forward evidence of compliance to the commission through the designated email address provided in the notice. The exercise is being carried out under Sections 692(3) and (4) of CAMA 2020, which empowers the CAC to strike off companies that are no longer carrying on business or have persistently failed to meet statutory requirements.
A company that has not filed annual returns is invisible to the system in the most consequential way. It cannot demonstrate governance, cannot be verified by lenders, cannot be trusted by corporate partners, and cannot access the legal protections that registration is supposed to provide. Non-compliance is not a technicality — it is a business liability.
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The pattern of escalating enforcement
This is the CAC’s sixth large-scale compliance exercise in recent years, and the pace has been accelerating. The commission deregistered over 400,000 companies in 2025, and a further 100,000 were targeted in a separate exercise in February 2026. CAC Registrar-General Hussaini Magaji has been consistent in his position: dormant entities clog the system and distort the true picture of active business activity in Nigeria, and the CAC’s mandate requires an accurate and credible register.
The commission is simultaneously strengthening collaboration with the EFCC, the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, and the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering — a partnership specifically designed to reduce the misuse of registered entities for illegal financial activity. The introduction of beneficial ownership disclosures as a filing requirement reflects Nigeria’s alignment with global corporate transparency standards.
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What Nigerian businesses need to know
The implications of deregistration extend well beyond the loss of a registration certificate. A deregistered company loses its legal existence as a corporate entity, meaning it can no longer enter contracts, hold assets, sue, or be sued in its registered name. Banks can freeze accounts associated with deregistered entities, and government agencies can exclude them from procurements, licences, and intervention programmes.
The CAC has also signalled plans to introduce a mandatory revalidation process for all registered entities as part of its ongoing reform agenda. The direction of travel is clear: regulatory tolerance for non-compliance is narrowing, and the cost of staying informal or failing to file is rising.
The 90-day window is not symbolic. It is the last practical opportunity for the businesses on that list to preserve their legal status before the commission acts. For any registered business that has not filed returns in the past year, checking the CAC website today is not optional.
