Tunde Fowler is Now Very Quiet

Once upon a time, Tunde Fowler made more noise than a Lagos bus park at rush hour. He was the crown prince of tax, the undisputed czar of internally generated revenue, the life of Abuja soirées, and a fixture at every red carpet worth its velvet. From Lagos to the federal capital, his name hummed like a high-tension wire, charged, constant, and hard to miss.

Now? Silence. Not the strategic kind, but the type that makes one lean forward and squint because something feels missing.

This is the same man who, at the helm of Lagos State’s tax agency, turned monthly revenues from a sleepy N3.6 billion into a roaring N20.5 billion. A feat that didn’t just catch attention, it wrote him into the playbook of reformers. Then came his 2015 appointment as the boss of FIRS, Nigeria’s tax engine, and with it, a promise of federal transformation.

What followed, though, was a spectacular paradox: a tenure that sparked both intrigue and indictment, applause and anxiety, complete with Lexus convoys, too many directorates, and far too few staff chairs.

By the time he left in 2019, replaced with barely a handshake, he’d packed the FIRS with over 10,000 staff, corpers labelled “Tax Volunteers,” and a management culture more reminiscent of jazz than structure. The aftermath felt like waking from a noisy dream—one remembers the sound, but not always the song.

And yet, here we are in 2025, and Mr. Fowler (who will be 69 this August) is still around. No scandals. No summits. No selfies at comedy concerts. It’s all curiously mellow.

In a country where public figures either cling or get dragged, his quiet feels partly intentional. Maybe it’s the dignity of departure. Maybe it’s a man watching from the balcony, a bit amused at the mess below, a bit interested in joining in.

For now, some Nigerians are waiting, necks craned, hoping to get even a little snoop on the man. But no success so far.