Nigeria celebrated an important milestone on October the 1st, 2010. She marked 50 years of independence from British rule.There was another important milestone for Nigeria this year: 20 years of the Corporate Affairs Commission.

It is one of those organisations which serves as a gate-keeper for innovation, investment and wealth creation, since no one can begin any business venture of note in Nigeria without going through them. I had tried to incorporate a company in Nigeria a few years back and came up against quite a few brick walls not least the fact that information on the procedure was shrouded in mystery and confusion. Speaking with a bosom friend Jackson Ike more than 4 years after that it turned out that nothing had changed.

The first problem we both encountered was a not very welcoming website. The home page seemed like a something from the archives of the wayback machine. I expected that in 2010, we would be able to quickly find company names that were in use, so we could exclude them from our potential list of names. It turns out that this is currently a manual process which can delay company registration or atleast make it a challenging endeavour.

While dissecting this and other impediments to registering a company I made a promise to my friend and myself on the day that something needed to be done. We weren't in a position to physically do something but we could create an enabling environment for such a debate. The seeds of the project were sown. The project was a logo design for the Corporate Affairs Commission and a redesign of its website along with some data capture forms. I would deliver the designs and as part of the 9ja@50 Project, ask Nigerians if they felt it was in line with their vision for The Corporate Affairs Commission for the next 50 years.

For us, to be fit-for-purpose, the website had to be able to accomplish the following objectives:

- Provide information on and facilitate the process of starting up and closing down a company.

- Provide information about important happenings at the CAC the would be of public interest.

- Enable entrepreneurs to easily do company name searches on the website.

- Enable the general public to subscribe to data provided by the CAC about companies and their directors ( a source of revenue).

- Enable companies to file documents online or be able to download the necessary data capture forms to do so offline.

With these objectives in mind we went to work and have provided a link to the preliminary outcome of our work in form of screenshots a redesigned CAC website and logo. We have done this without any funding from the CAC or any government agencies. We invite the CAC to take hold of these screenshots (we will be posting screenshots to other redesigned pages and forms) and logo and employ them in the redesign of the website and other brand elements where possible. We are happy to help and can be reached via the information on our website at http://www.in3k8.com. This is our 20th birthday gift to the CAC and our 50th birthday gift to Nigeria.

To Nigerians at home and in diaspora we ask: does this meet with your vision for the CAC? What other parts of Nigeria do you think are in need of a revamp or change? What would you do differently? We would be happy to read your feedback.

The 9ja@50 Project Team.

Proposed CAC logo.