Register a company in Nigeria, the 220-million giant.

Yes - CAC incorporation, NIPC registration and tax files run by power of attorney, and the capital wires rather than travels. Banks generally want one meeting with a director, and expatriate-quota steps eventually involve presence. We sequence a Lagos trip around the bank.

Our fees start from $2,900, or $4,900 with banking and the CCI rail. The structural number is the capital: foreign-owned companies issue at least ₦100 million in current practice - your equity, deployed in your business, sized for the permit stack. Renewals with accounting start at $1,800 per year.

In current practice, yes: CAC and permit practice size foreign-participation companies at ₦100 million issued capital - roughly $65-70,000 at floated rates - and the business-permit and quota machinery assumes it. It is equity in your own company, not a payment to anyone, imported through the rails, so the CCI issues an order against it. We structure the amount and the import properly, once.

Because it is the exit: the Certificate of Capital Importation, issued by an authorised-dealer bank when your capital arrives through official channels, is the statutory basis for buying dollars at market rate to repatriate dividends, fees and sale proceeds. With it, exits are routine even in tight markets; without it, money is stranded in polite perpetuity. It is the first document we engineer, every time.

It consolidated: the 2025 acts, effective 2026, merged the levy jungle into a cleaner code - 30% for large companies, zero for small ones under the raised thresholds, a unified development levy, VAT held at 7.5% with better input credits, and clearer administration. Pioneer status (0% for three to five years) continues to apply to qualifying industries. Planning now runs on the new code as written - half the market still quotes the old one.

Historically brutally - the 2023 float moved it from an official 460 to a market 1,500 per dollar - and structurally more honest since: one market rate, functioning windows, and CCI-holders repatriating at it. Treasury practice: dollar revenue legs where the model allows, domiciliary accounts alongside naira, prompt conversion discipline, and pricing that assumes two-way movement. The float hurt; the fiction it replaced hurt more.

Two separate doors: NEPZA free zones - Lekki, with the refinery, foremost - grant 0% in-zone for export-oriented operations with their own licensing. Pioneer status, granted by the NIPC to qualifying industries (manufacturing, agro-processing, tech infrastructure and more), exempts corporate tax for three years extendable to five, onshore. Both are substantive applications; we build files that pass.

The CBN runs a real regime: payment-service categories with capital requirements, sandbox paths, and supervision that has matured with the sector's scale. Africa's deepest fintech market is licensed accordingly - obtainable, capitalized, compliance-heavy. We run CBN tracks as dedicated projects on the corporate base described on this page.

Priced, not assumed: the grid supplies some, gensets and solar-plus-storage supply the rest - a line item in every serious model - while ports improve with Lekki's deep water and roads carry the rest. Security is regional: Lagos, Abuja, and the commercial south operate normal business lives with standard precautions; specific regions follow specific protocols. Operators who budget reality thrive here.

The company: one to two weeks at the CAC. The NIPC-permit stack: two to four more. Banking with the CCI: one to three weeks. Expatriate quotas: four to twelve by case. A working, banked, CCI-railed Nigerian operation inside six to eight weeks is the honest default.