A Lagos business address for CAC registration

• CAC registers a company at an address in Nigeria where the company can actually be reached by post — offices, not a P.O. box. Everything else (bank accounts, tax, service of legal papers) assumes someone can walk in or write to that address and be received.

• If the company neither owns nor leases the premises, the person who controls them consents to the use. In practice that means a signed letter from whoever operates the building, kept with your records in case the address is questioned.

• The address outlives the registration. It appears on the certificate, on letterhead and in every KYC check afterwards, which is why a residential address weakens filings and a credible commercial address strengthens them.

Home address, your accountant's office, or a business address?

All three are used, and none is free of trade-offs. A director's home address costs nothing and registers fine, but it goes on the public record, follows the director into mail and visitors, and reads as a one-person operation to the bank and to clients. An accountant's office works until the accountant moves or charges for the favour. A serviced business address costs money — roughly what a boardroom hour costs per month — but the address stays put, the post is received by someone whose job it is, and there is a room to meet a client in when one asks.

The honest downside of a shared address: it is shared. A bank doing enhanced due diligence may ask what happens at the address, and the right answer is that trained reception receives your company's mail and visitors there — which is only true if the operator actually provides it. Ask any provider, us included, exactly that question before you register.

What the consent letter must say

Nothing exotic. It identifies the premises, names the company permitted to use them as its registered office, and is signed and dated by the person who controls the premises. Our own version is issued on request within one working day of an address client asking, so it arrives while the incorporation is still open on someone's desk.

Doing it from outside Nigeria

The sequence, start to finish, without a flight: buy the address plan first, so the address exists before you touch the form; request the consent letter and attach it to the application; then let mail arrive at reception, where each item is logged and scanned to you the same working day, so the address is a live channel rather than a line on a certificate. Our address plan is $449 for 12 months with the consent letter, mail scanning and call answering included — that page, not this one, is where you buy it.