HOW TO REGISTER A CHURCH IN NIGERIA WITH THE CORPORATE AFFAIRS COMMISSION (C.A.C.)

The Corporate Affairs Commission (C.A.C.) is the government agency responsible for the registration of churches in Nigeria.

To register a church, you have the option of engaging a lawyer to do it on your behalf or you do it yourself. This article is a do-it-yourself article meant to guide non-lawyers in the registration of churches.  Even if you decide to engage a lawyer to register a church, the information here will be useful to you in dealing with your lawyer.

PROCEDURE:

A. NAME APPROVAL/RESERVATION.

The first thing you need to do is to get an approval of the name of the church you intend to register. It is the C.A.C. (Corporate Affairs Commission) that approves the name of any church that you intend to register.

The C.A.C. will not approve the name if it is the same or similar to the name of another church that is already registered or reserved for registration.

To get the name approval/reservation, go to any C.A.C. office to buy Form “CAC IT NAME” otherwise known as “Availability Check/Reservation of Name” Form.

Note: There is a C.A.C. office in every state capital in Nigeria. Lagos has 3 branches of C.A.C. at Ikeja, Yaba and Lagos Island while the corporate headquarters is in Abuja.)

Note also that to buy this form or any other form or payment you intend to make to the C.A.C., must be done through the bank. This practice started with the coming of the Buhari administration that enforced the TSA (Treasury Single Account) in financial transactions involving Federal Government agencies.

In this case, all you do is go to any commercial bank, pick a teller and fill it indicating that the payment is made in favour of C.A.C. for “Name Reservation.” Write the name of the church you intend to register as the payer of the money.

You can also do the transaction online via www.remita.net. (Remita is a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) licensed e-payment platform through which payment are made to Federal Government agencies as part of the implementation of the TSA.)

If you make the payment at the bank, you will be given a printout evidencing the transaction and this printout together with the customer copy of the teller is what you will take to any C.A.C. office to get the Form “CAC IT NAME” (Availability Check/Reservation of Name) Form.

When you get this form, fill it immediately.  (Here is a sample of this form

FORM CAC IT

 

On the form you are allowed to fill 3 different names of the church you intend to register in order of preference.

Also on the form is a column you are asked to fill the principal aims and objective of the association i.e. the church. Fill this column indicating the aims and objectives of the church for instance: “Preaching the Gospel to the world,” “evangelizing and winning souls for Christ,” “teaching and baptizing people in the name of the God,” etc.  

Once you are through, sign and date the form and submit it to them at the C.A.C. After a week, go back to the C.A.C. for the result. One of the three names will be approved and reserved for you or all three names will be rejected (denied.)  

As mentioned above, the name of your church would not be approved if it is the same or similar to the name of an already registered church. In the event that all three names you submitted are denied approval, you have to think of other names to use. In that case, you get another form “CAC IT NAME,” fill in the new names you have and submit it again.

If and when a name you submitted is approved by the C.A.C., the name is automatically reserved for you for 60 days. The implication of this is that for the next 60 days, no other person can be given the approval to register a church with that name or a name that is similar to it. However, if after 60 days you could not complete the process of the registration, that name can be approved for another person that applied for it.

B. PUBLICATION.

After getting the name of the church approved and reserved, the next thing you will do is to put up a newspaper publication. The publication will be in two newspapers informing the general public that your church has applied to the C.A.C. for registration and a certain number of persons whose names appear in the advert are the proposed trustees of the church and if any member of the general public has any reason why the church should not be registered, such a person should forward his or her objection(s) to the C.A.C. within 28 days.

Trustees' public notice advert in newspaper.

A sample of this newspaper publication is as shown here.

A note on Trustees.

The trustees are in practical terms, the directors or administrators of the church. They are the people who apply for the registration of the church. That is why at the end of the day, if the registration is successful, the full name of the church will be something like this, “INCORPORATED TRUSTEES OF ………CHURCH.” It is a body that has juristic personality and can sue and be sued in a law court.

By law, only one or two persons can be registered as trustees but in practice, this is hardly done. Usually it is between 3 to 10 persons. (Ten is the maximum.) Very often as we have seen in Nigeria, the founder of the church, his wife and one or two other trusted elder in the church are appointed as trustees of the church for the purpose of the registration of the church.

Be informed also that after the church is registered, new trustees can be added and any of the registered trustees can be removed as well especially if the trustee dies or leaves the church.

For somebody to qualify to be a trustee, he or she must be of age (that is above 18); must be resident in Nigeria; must be of sound mind; must not be a convicted felon or someone who had been declared bankrupt by a court.

You are expected to hold a general meeting of the church wherein the trustees are elected by at least two-thirds of those present.

C. PREPARATION AND FILING OF THE REGISTRATION FORM.

As soon as the 28 days mentioned in the newspaper publication elapses and no objection is sent by anyone to the CAC, you can then begin the last lap of the registration process which involves buying the required form, filling it and submitting it to the C.A.C. together with the required documents and payment of the filing fees of N30,000 (Thirty thousand Naira.)

The first thing to do here is to buy Trustees Incorporation Form from the C.A.C. The payment can be done online via Remita website or go to the bank to pay for it as you did when you bought the Form CAC IT NAME. However, this form costs N1,000 (One thousand Naira.)

When you have paid in the bank, take your teller and printout to the C.A.C. to get the form. A sample of this form is available on this blog for your perusal.

This form is detailed and must be typed using a manual or electric typewriter and not to be filled with hand.

In it, you will fill details about the church you intend to register, it’s main aims and objectives, the number of trustees, etc.

There is a column where the passport photographs of each of the trustees are to be attached as well as their names, addresses and occupation.

Furthermore, there is a column where an impression of the common seal of the church is made. (The common seal is an iron seal having the approved name of the church on it. You can get this done in an artist/sign writer’s shop for as low as five thousand naira.)

When you finish with this form, include with it the following items

1.    Photocopies of means of identification of each trustee. (The means of identification should either be an international passport, driver’s licence, National Identity Card or Voter’s Card.)

2.    Two copies of the constitution of the church. (You can download a sample of a church constitution as required to be prepared by the CAC on this blog.

3.    Minutes of the general meeting where the trustees were elected and the special clause adopted. (This should be done on a letter-headed paper of the church. The Special Clause should be copied from the Trustees Incorporation Form into the minutes)

4.    Trustee Declaration Form which is an oath (an affidavit) that each of the trustees swears to before a Commissioner for Oaths in a High Court affirming that he or she agreed to act as a trustee of the proposed church.

Having done the above, you can then take the form and all the above mentioned documents together with a copy of the two newspapers the publication was made to the CAC to vet and assess. If anything is not properly done or something you are to provide is not provided, you will be asked to do so.

Once you are certified to have done all the needful, you will be asked to go to the bank to pay N30,000 (Thirty thousand Naira) as filing fees for the registration of the church.

Again, this can be done online via Remita or the bank. Thereafter, go back to the C.A.C. with your teller and printout as well as all the assessed documents and leave them with them.

The process is filing for the registration completed and all things equal, the certificate of registration will be out in two to three weeks.