We show that every compactum has cohomological dimension $1$ with respect to a finitely generated nilpotent group $G$ whenever it has cohomological dimension $1$ with respect to the abelianization of $G$. This is applied to the extension theory to obtain a cohomological dimension theory condition for a finite-dimensional compactum $X$ for extendability of every map from a closed subset of $X$ into a nilpotent $\CW$-complex $M$ with finitely generated homotopy groups over all of $X$.