Raising your company's share capital is mostly a paperwork exercise, but it comes with a fee, a deadline and a rule that decides when the increase is actually real.
CAC's fee for every extra naira of share capital
A private company pays CAC ₦10,000 for every ₦1 million or part of it. A public company pays a higher rate per million.
CAC's fee schedule does not say whether the charge is based on the size of the increase or your company's total share capital afterwards. The increase itself is the natural reading, but confirm that, and how a part-million increase rounds up, with the portal before you pay.
The notice deadline once the resolution is passed
Shareholders pass a resolution to authorise the increase. From that point, within 15 days of the resolution.
If your company needs a separate regulator's approval for the increase, such as one tied to your sector, the same window applies to filing that notice and the accompanying affidavit with CAC.
Diarise the resolution date the moment the meeting ends. This deadline is easy to lose track of if the paperwork sits for even a couple of weeks.
If a second regulator's approval is part of the process, start that conversation early. Waiting for their response before you even begin CAC's own paperwork risks running the notice deadline down to nothing.
The paid-up rule before it takes effect
An increase does not take effect just because CAC has been notified. At least 25% of the total share capital, including the new shares, must actually be paid up.
The directors also file a statutory declaration confirming this. Until both the payment and the declaration are in place, the increase has not legally taken hold, whatever your internal records might already show.
Stamp duty sits outside CAC's own fee
CAC's fee is not the only cost tied to new share capital. Tax advisers put stamp duty on new share capital at around 0.75%, charged separately under tax law rather than CAC's schedule.
This article has not verified the current stamp duty rate against the full text of the tax acts now in force, so treat it as a figure to confirm with an accountant, not a fixed number to budget against without checking. Stamp duty on share capital at CAC registration looks at this in more detail for a new company's first share capital.
The return of allotment that usually follows
Increasing share capital often goes hand in hand with allotting new shares to fill it. That allotment has its own separate filing and deadline.
Return of allotment: the form and the deadline covers that next step, so you are not caught out expecting one filing to cover both events.
You can start a CAC company registration if you have not yet incorporated, and the CAC registration hub links the rest of this series for a company already trading.