In this paper, we study bifurcation of limit cycles in planar cubic near-Hamiltonian systems with a nilpotent center. We use normal form theory to compute the generalized Lyapunov constants and show that there exist at least 9 limit cycles around the nilpotent center. This is a new lower bound on the number of limit cycles in planar cubic near-Hamiltonian systems with a nilpotent center.