Contracts Signed in Minutes, Not Weeks.

What actually needs to be in writing

• Scope: what is included, and explicitly what is not. The exclusions prevent more arguments than the inclusions.
• Deliverables and dates, with what happens if either side misses one.
• Price, payment schedule, and what happens on late payment.
• Revisions: how many are included and what an extra one costs.
• Ownership of the work, and when it transfers — usually on final payment.
• Termination: how either side ends the engagement and what is owed at that point.

Revisions and termination are the two most commonly omitted and the two most commonly disputed. That is not a coincidence.

Electronic signatures in Nigeria

Electronic signatures are recognised in Nigerian law, and for ordinary commercial agreements an e-signed contract is enforceable. Certain instruments are excluded from electronic execution — wills, and some documents requiring particular formalities — so anything unusual is worth checking rather than assuming.

What makes an e-signature defensible is the record around it: who signed, from where, when, and that the document has not changed since. A signature image pasted into a PDF has none of that. A timestamped audit trail does.

Getting contracts signed quickly

The delay is almost never the signing. It is the printing, the scanning, the courier, and the two days the document spends on someone's desk. Removing those steps is usually the difference between a contract signed the same day and one signed the following week — and work that starts a week earlier is paid for a week earlier.