‘We Cannot Pray Nigeria to Prosperity’

Let’s begin the conversation with the controversy over the tax law and gazettes. Many people are saying that there are several versions of the law. So, we don’t even know which one you are implementing now. Maybe you can enlighten us on that…

Before going to the issue of gazette, I consider it important to share the background to what we are doing. And the background is simple: that at every point in time, when you have your chance, your time to contribute what you think is the best to a system, you must do it regardless of what some people think. When you have a country like ours, where all the time we profess that we want it to be great, we must also understand that we are not the only country in the world that wants to be great. So, the best thing for us is to say, ‘okay, if we want to be like this country or that country, what did they do to be where they are?’ And as the Bible says ‘if the foundation is destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ It means that everything must have a solid foundation. If you want a prosperous country, there are fundamentals.

I know that Nigerians pray a lot. But we cannot just pray our country to prosperity. We cannot just go to one corner to pray that the country will be great and expect result. We will be deceiving ourselves on that. People work to make countries great. People sacrifice to make their country great. Some people take risks to make their country great. And one of those risks is that if I want sustainable development, there are parameters, there are recipes for it. And one of these is the economic environment. You cannot have a country like ours where we say, ‘Oh, we want to be a one trillion-dollar economy’ without changing the fundamentals. In Nigeria before this consolidation, we had tax laws in about 163 books.

I am talking about where you have one provision or the other that a business must comply with. There were also obsolete laws with the oldest being the Stamp Duty Act of 1939. And that was the stamp duty Act we were using before we changed to this current one. Now, why do you have those 163 books? Because every time that people saw a gap, they would say ‘ha! we need to do this’ – and with that, they made several laws in ad hoc ways. That was how we ended up with a multiplicity of laws on several issues. When his administration came onboard, the president decided that if we really want to grow our country, we need to change the way we do things, beginning with the tax laws. Let me cite one example regarding what we call earmark taxes.

We have education trust fund and several of such deductions that are based on percentages and they impact businesses. By the time you aggregate these taxes, more than 100% of profit would have gone. All these affect the bottomline of businesses and that is why most of them are leaving because they want to comply but the law you have for them is a problem. I’ll give you another one. There is an Employee Act that was enacted in 1962. And the law states that no company must employ anybody in Nigeria except that company is paying taxes in Nigeria. As of the time that law was being promulgated, nobody thought of Google or those tech companies that could be domiciled outside the country with Nigerians as employees.

When the law was made, it was good but it has created a huge problem over time. Now, our young people started going to Ghana to use their TIN number before the change in the law, for them to work anywhere for Google, Amazon and others. Because, until now it is illegal to do so in Nigeria. Look at Binance. One of the reasons why we are losing many court cases is because we don’t have any law on crypto, and e-collection. So, if we want to be like those countries that we talk about, we must also begin to do some of the things that they do.

That was why we said, ‘let’s review all the laws’. The president set up the Taiwo Oyedele committee which consulted and put things together. They did that for one year before sending the bills to the National Assembly, which passed them into law. Ironically, if anybody had asked me which one of the laws would I put my bets on to pass easily, I would have said VAT. But it became the most problematic. Why? Because by law, anywhere in the world, VAT is like a consumption tax. If you look at the whole history of it in Nigeria, before now, they said the states should collect it, but they could not. And that is why they said, ‘okay, transfer it to the federal government.’ The only reason we were collecting 15 % then was that the cost of collection was 15%.

That is why when we collect money, the federal government takes 15% and we share 85% to the states. But when we were drafting the law, I said, no! When you want equity, you must come with clean hands; there is no jurisdiction anywhere to claim 15% of VAT – because VAT is not a federal government tax. I said, let’s reduce our own take to 10% – so that 90% goes back to the states.

Then, we looked at the distribution of proceeds. Lagos State alone takes the lion share because most head offices of companies are in Lagos. When these companies remit VAT, they do so from their headquarters. And when we want to distribute, we use where they generate it from which then advantages Lagos. So, if you have MTN, you have Dangote, you have BUA, all of them are headquartered in Lagos. The same with banks. We said no, we have to change the model of distribution by using data.

For instance, Dangote knows the number of his distributors in Kano, the number of his distributors in Oyo and they have the sales to that effect. So, when they want to do it now, let them factor in all that. That was the thinking and I said everybody would accept. But as we’ve all seen, we know where we are on that. I am just saying all these to lay the foundation on why we are doing what we are doing because if we have to be where we want to as a nation, we must change the way we do things. We said out of the multiplicity of laws we had then, let’s have only four laws, which is by category. Number one is the Establishment Act, because one of the problems is that the Establishment Act is different from tax provision.

You had the Federal Inland Revenue Act then, that had tax provision, which is wrong. We are already an agency of government; we are not revenue generating, we only collect revenue. So, we don’t need to have tax provision in our Establishment Act. We separated it. That is not in line with our name. We collect VAT from which states collect 85% as it were then, so, how can you call us federal? Again, you say “Inland”. That presupposes that we collect money only within the country. No, we collect money from Amazon and others. When you say “Inland”, that does not match so we changed it to Nigeria Revenue Service.

We collect for all Nigeria, and we collect all Nigeria’s money anywhere it is – whether inland or outside. The next one is the Nigeria Tax Act. Instead of looking for 162 books to know which law to comply with, we put all the laws in one book as Nigerian tax book. Apart from simplicity and harmonisation, you cannot have double taxation because you only have one chapter for VAT and it is there, unlike what obtained when you had VAT provision on oil and gas, VAT provision on sugar and several sectors like that. With that, you had double taxation or multiple taxes. So, we consolidated these into one book. That will definitely remove whatever you may think you have as multiple taxes because you have one chapter per law.

The third one is the Nigeria Tax Administration Act and what does that mean? Now, I have an establishment, I have law. How is this tax going to be administered, taking into consideration that we are federating units. You have IRS in the states and you have federal government. Now, consolidate all the revenues. We have a tax act now, we have an establishment to run it, but how is it going to be run? For example, you have these free trade zones. They will tell you if you don’t pay tax, you pay 10%. In another book, they say if you don’t pay tax, you pay a penalty of 5%. You see the same violation with clearly different penalties because there is no book that is actually telling us how it is going to be administered.

So, we have the Tax Administration Act. And the last one – because you are federating units, and no one is superior to the other, we need to have where these subsets of federal units interact legally, and appropriately – and that’s why we have the Joint Revenue Board (JRB), which is the combination of states and federal government. What we introduced which is under JRB is like the OMBUDS, because they can’t go to court…we put them there…and that is what we’ve done, which in the last 50 years of Nigeria’s existence, we’ve not had anything like this. Now, that has simplified things and that is the intent, that is the purpose.

Now to the percentages from companies from different sectors. We know these funds are doing something. So, call them a development levy which is capped; anything you want, do it from that development levy. Anybody that is planning for tax purposes can then plan. The same problem with VAT. In our old law, they will tell you that if you have VAT on capital, you can’t claim it.

And what does that mean? Those things were good in those days when there was no AfCFTA because we have an advantage of population. So, you cannot compare someone establishing a factory in Ghana to anybody establishing a factory in Nigeria. Today, we have signed into all these agreements and we are the leader in the subregion. If I establish a water factory in Nigeria, VAT today is 7.5%. If they establish the same water factory in Ghana, the one in Ghana is cheaper by 7.5% without considering any other costs. So, as a result, because of the new regime that they can produce in Ghana and sell to Nigerians, we need to remove that. Those are the changes that we have made.

I just gave a background. Now, to your question. The law-making processes are simple; we present the bills while members of the National Assembly do their public hearing after which they pass them into laws. The two houses will harmonise and then send what they pass to the President who signs and sends it back to their clerk. The Clerk of the National Assembly gazettes the law and sends it to us.

Now, if you look at all these processes, there is no role for the federal government beyond the assent of the president. There is also no role for the Nigeria Revenue Service after the president has signed. Now, when the issue of gazette or no gazette came up and a lot of people rushed to me, I said, ‘just listen, what is a gazette?’ Gazette means printing. There is a history behind that. After the passage of a law, the only way to make it public for everybody was to print copies at the Federal Government Press in Lagos. But today, because you have the internet, and you have several stages in law, you can have several copies that are not the real law. Because after the House passes their own, Senate will pass their own, and they have the harmonisation. All these things are exclusive to the National Assembly.

We don’t have any role. So, when they come to say “gazette ‘A’ is different from this”, I replied by asking them how they expect me to know when I am not a member of the National Assembly. 

So, you are telling us that you are implementing genuine tax laws?

There can never be any other one because if you follow the National Assembly in December, they told us that this is the certified true copy of the law we passed and that was the copy given to me. And this is the only copy I will have. They are the only one that can give me a copy. It’s like you are in a football match. While the referee blows his whistle, there could sometimes also be several other whistles from the crowd. But you only listen and obey that of the referee. So, for me, the law is the one given to me by the National Assembly, which they’ve done publicly.  We don’t even have a basis for what some people are alleging. There is no need for it. There can never be any need because there can only be one law. Nobody else will have any other documents apart from what the National Assembly has done. 

There are over 40 guidelines that are supposed to govern the new tax administration. It was supposed to be rolled out from January 1. But Mr. Taiwo Ayodele, chair of the tax committee, said recently that they put on hold the issue of the release of guidelines. Why was that done and what exactly are the challenges of implementing the new tax laws?

When you say the law has taken effect from 1st of January, it’s not entirely correct. The laws were passed in June 2025 and assented to by the president. From that day, the laws took effect. And I will give you examples. We had the establishment of the Nigeria Revenue Service while the appointment of the executive directors was done in October. In November, the Ombudsman was appointed by the president. All these were based on the new law which has taken effect. But there is something we call national tax policy, which is done everywhere in the world. For tax, anytime you have a change in rates, you must give a minimum of three months before the effects of that rate. That will allow companies and all stakeholders to adjust their books. For example, we said that we are not going to collect educational tax. Take a company that has budgeted for paying educational tax. If you implement it immediately, how do you want them to respond? Now you say, okay, it’s no more educational tax, it’s a development levy. They also counter: In our sector, what we put there is educational tax.

So, the policy that guides the law has provided for that, that you give a minimum of three months. The projection from June was that, okay, if the law says if you change one thing, you do three months, what would change? Nobody has changed it in the last 50 years. Three months may not be enough. Give them six months. So that’s why we say the rates application starts from January 1. And that was when people were saying suspend the law and I said which law do you want to suspend? The law that has been in existence? What we are saying is that rates take effect from the 1st of January because we can give them months to adjust their system.

The law has been in effect. And I tell you, just to expand it further, when Mr. President assented to the law, what it has done is to repeal all the laws you were using to collect taxes. So, the only law in the system is the law he has assented to. If you now suspend that law, what then will I rely on to collect your money? That’s one. Two, under democracy, except you are in a state of emergency, nobody including Mr. President has the right to suspend the law. So, how will you suspend the law? That shows the level of understanding of the process. We cannot suspend the law. Now, on the guidelines, these are internal arrangements of the NRS.

And what do guidelines mean? Let me go a little bit technical. We say the rate should start 1st of January. But remember, it is not all companies that their year-end is December 2025. So, if you have a company whose year-end is June 2026, it means that half of the year is in the old tax law while the other one is in the new tax law. What are the internal provisions? How do you do that? That is what we call guidelines.

In essence, it is not a public consumption document. It is purely an internal arrangement that if I have a company whose year-end falls in those two periods, how would I manage it?  Here, you need to have an internal guideline that tells which one is transactional tax and which one is income tax. When you say transactional tax, the one you do immediately, the rate takes effect immediately. If it is income, the law says on a preceding year basis. For example, the income of 2025 is going to be assessed in 2026. When you have that, what do you do? These are the internal guidelines. What Oyedele explained to them was that it is an internal process within us. It has nothing to do with external applications. It has nothing to do with the position of the law. Nothing is being stopped and nothing is being delayed; it’s just in the normal course of the nature of reforms we are undertaking.

Most of the places that are patronized by really poor people are paying VAT which are not remitted. Can there be a further declassification in that regard? The other thing is we speak of taxpayers’ money. And you and I know that the bulk of Nigeria’s money is not taxpayers’ money. It comes from oil. But there has always been a contention about equity in distributions and the same applies now. How do you respond to that?

Let’s begin with the issue of VAT. Now, if you observe, most of the items we believe that poor people actually consume are tax exempted. When I say tax, I mean VAT. Don’t forget tax is on income, on return, not on investment, and is not on capital. So, anybody that has returns is not a poor man, anybody that has profit is not a poor man. Tax has little to do with poor people. And I mean it. Not only in Nigeria but everywhere in the world, tax is being paid by less than 10% of the top, if you do it category by category. And that is why I throw it as a challenge that if anybody has read anything in our Act that imposes more tax on the poor, the person should come out. Now, on remittance. You observe that one of the things that we’ve done in this Act is the collection of royalties by NRS from NUPRC. When there was a lot of resistance and people argued, I said to them that the NUPRC is a regulator of oil and gas, as CBN is the regulator of banks. How do you imagine that I would ask CBN to collect taxes from the bank and remit it to me? Where is the capacity? Royalty is one of the deductible expenses that I consider before I say this is profit tax. So, if you collect it, and you don’t collect it well, how will you know? Because this is not your call and it’s like me, and I am being open here.

This is one of the reasons that we stopped the regime of tax credit for roads. In fact, it’s part of the first files handed over to me – tax credit for roads and everything. And I was pressured to do the first one, so I did it. When it came to the second one, I said, no! This one is like you are tarring your road to prison. And my people asked me and I said, okay, look at how huge this file is – how would I confirm as NRS that the road had been done? It’s true I have people at Ikot-Ekpene but they are tax controllers, they are not engineers. So, this one has to go back to the Ministry of Works. The fact that they mentioned tax credit does not make it a tax man’s work. I don’t have an engineer to confirm that the road is done. The fact that they call it tax does not make it a tax work. I cannot be doing this, return it back because there’s no way I will have the capacity to actually ascertain what I’m doing. It’s the same thing for NUPRC to say they want to collect tax because the fact that they have something to do with oil has nothing to do with it. Now, we’ve started collecting from this month (January) and I will tell you the implication; royalty rate is less than tax rate. Now, when you have your oil, pay royalty, if you don’t pay me, I will not allow you to deduct it. If I don’t allow you to deduct it, I will charge you more because tax rate is 30%, royalty is less than 15%. So, it’s better for you to pay.

The second is on e-invoice. Some of these big companies will come to me and say the total money we spent on diesel is N10 billion, and you know diesel is a deductible expense before you can ascertain their profit. Now, you told me that you spent N10 billion on diesel but don’t forget that your expense is another man’s income; and I have not seen any diesel supplier that their turnover is up to that amount. And so, we introduced e-invoice and what would that do? If you justify that your diesel cost is N10 billion, all those people you issued invoices to, you will show me and I will write love letters to the suppliers of diesel – the likes of AA Rano – that just to let you be aware that this company just notified that you have this invoice in your possession…now what does that mean? This is why we have put technology everywhere to know whether you remit or not.

When we were drafting the law, some people said we want to put VAT on agriculture too so that we can have something. And I sat them down. The yam you produce, who consumes it? The yam you produce is consumed in Lagos. Now, If I put VAT on your yam, it makes it more expensive. When it’s more expensive, people will not buy it and you don’t have a storage facility. It makes it worse, because it’s not by increasing the price for you. It is where it is being consumed. So, the reason we say don’t put VAT on it is that the food is cheaper, and because you can’t store your yam. So, people just need to understand the import and the impact of what they request for. And as to the way we will distribute, I know we should all be fair to Nigeria.

I’ll be speaking from my experience as a business owner. I have been running a business for nearly a decade now, and we’ve been tax-compliant. But my question really is, how is the NRS ensuring that tax-compliant businesses, such as mine, are able to access the benefits of being compliant? And how is the NRS also looking to collaborate with subnational agencies like the Abuja Municipal Area Council to avoid double taxation? Where you’re paying your annual income tax, and then you’re paying on transaction, the 7.5% VAT, and then other taxes like 5% or entertainment tax, among others, depending on the nature of the business. Like you said, by the time you settle all of these percentages, where’s the profit? So, this is really the main concern. And then secondly, how do you intend to ensure that the average business owner is able to receive the right information that simplifies how to be compliant, and if you are exempted, do you still have to file? This is one of the things impacting businesses and causing nationwide panic.

Thank you, my sister, for being compliant, and that is why we are here. First, I am a Nigerian who is well aware that people’s trust in government has been broken. Remember, before the first of January, people started taking their money from the bank because there were rumours that government could take such money. But I had to plead with people to let January come first. And when people saw that their monies were still intact in banks, sanity returned. I don’t know whether you observe it but the low salary earners now have their tax reduced. It has not increased. The first thing I did when I assumed office was to harp on the relationship between the taxpayer and the tax collector.

It is symbiotic. Your success is my own success. And the way I interpret it is very simple. The tax rate is 30%. If I help you to make N100 billion, I will take N30 billion. If I help you to make N200 billion, I will take N60 billion. If I help you to make N300 billion, I will take N90 billion. So, if I want my money to increase, I just need to help you. The idea is to make more money, not to shackle you. And that is why it is not Nigeria Revenue Authority but Nigeria Revenue Service. We are service providers because your wellbeing is our wellbeing. It is when it is well with you that it is well with us. And if you look at the structure of NRS now, we’ve domiciled audits in the operations unit, instead of having audits as independent body.

I deliberately put it as part of operations, meaning that those people that collect tax are the ones auditing because if you put audit people, they don’t know what collection is, they can go and close the company. I used to tell them that unless it becomes critical, you must never go and close any business. And you know why? Because sales lost today can never be recovered even when the issue is eventually resolved. And when you don’t make the sales, there won’t be profits for me to tax. So, I’m not a policeman…I am just watering the vineyard where I want to take fruits. The tree must be pruned and that’s our duty, and that is how I do it. And that’s why in every operation now, I have tax service partners whereby they help you, talk to you, and do all that.

A lot of people talk about informal tax – that we should tax the informal sector. But in our laws, you can never see anywhere I put any process in place to introduce informal tax because the reason they are called informal is because they cannot be taxed. If you want to tax the informal sector, make them formal, and encourage them to formalise their businesses. So, to tax the informal sector could be illegal, and conflicting.

The fact that they are informal means that it cannot be taxed because the moment they are formal they fall into the category, whether you are a small business or not. So, we will continue to do the education. We will continue to interact with the people, and that is why if you see our category, I have the medium and emerging, and government and large tax departments, so that we can have tailor-made solutions to all those. It is for us to make sure that those small businesses grow or if not, they sustain where they are.

How do you manage emerging challenges in your daily tax administration?

This is one way of managing those challenges. And that is why I don’t take it for granted, this platform provided for me because what is required is understanding that people first believe and trust the government that we are not out there to make life more difficult for them. So, the most challenging thing at this time is information. Are people having half-truths or pretending they don’t understand. But all those things are planned for and expected, especially in this kind of environment.

One of the contentions for people is not whether they should pay tax but what they gain from paying tax. It’s obvious that we are trying to strengthen the tax system and we are borrowing quite a bit from other countries, developed countries, which is fine. However, over there, it is obvious there are huge benefits of paying tax. You have countries where there is free education from primary to university or primary to secondary school. There are places where there are emergency health services. You can just dial when you have an emergency and someone will come to pick you up. There are countries where you lose your job today, money will be paid to you until you find another job or you have a child, you’re paid for that and so many other things. I would like you to walk us through the specific benefits that Nigerians gain from paying tax because they would like to know. Then secondly, talking about how we use that money, have you thought about safeguards against leakages and waste?

Like I say, the best advertisement for tax compliance is what people say…If you look at us as government, and if you look at what I said earlier, this is the beginning of efforts for us to get to the levels of those countries that you spoke about. These actions will lead us there. But I want to make something very clear. Tax compliance is law. If we don’t obey, it will be a criminal offense, and people will end up in jail. The law does not allow people to ask questions before they comply. Now, in those places that we talked about – Canada and the rest, what is the percentage of the income to tax? I am aware that many Nigerians demand these services and justifiably so too but can some of them show you their tax slips? How many of us are actually ready for the Nigeria we all talk about? In the last three years, we have students’ loans for universities. Then, some university students came to me and said they want to go on protest. And I called their union president. I said, I hear you want to protest but on what? Are you a taxpayer? Tell me the section of the law that affects students? We’ve taken out hurdles from companies so that when students graduate, they can have jobs, and you say you want to go on protest? Against what? So, my point is that the government must be accountable and responsible. We owe it to our people to be responsible in the way we spend public funds, and we will continue. And I won’t deceive you, whether we like it or not, what we’ve seen during this tax bill has shown that people in government can no longer take Nigerians for granted. They will definitely ask questions about what the government is using their money for.

There’s an issue of trust. Whether people are taxpayers or not, people do not trust the government and it’s a major issue. There’s a trust deficit that we need to address…

Trust takes time everywhere and not particular to this government but all governments, and it is not only here in Nigeria. And that is why I said before the implementation, when people said, I should go and be explaining, I said no! It is not a matter of explanation but actuality. Now that everybody has seen it, it is clear…we are doing everything to ensure that we build trust in the system and the only way we can do that is to say this is what we promised and this is what is happening. It is not a matter of explanation. It is a matter of actuality. Now that everybody has seen it, whether you describe the bank transaction or not, nothing is happening. We are not taking your money. We are doing all we could to make sure that we build trust in the system. I will talk about what we allowed states to do— and that is one of the reasons why we stepped down the increase in VAT, because I explained this to the governors. I said, ‘I am only taking 10% of this money, but because we have allowed a lot of input and output, for you to have the same quantum of income, let’s increase it’, they said no. Well, it’s their money and I said Okay. Remember that whatever we allow, or whatever we pay as VAT is an interest that reduces profit. Now that they don’t pay as much as expected, profit increases, and it is these state governors that share the profit we collect through FAAC. So, what we are in quote, taking from them on the one hand, they are taking it back through the distribution of Company Income Tax (CIT) that has increased because people have paid less VAT. That is why, for us as a government, we look at it in totality and not one way. The whole idea is about taxing right, not taxing more.

How about the government’s plans to broaden the tax net?

We just want to tax right. We tax the business where the wealth is created. We want to do it, and it does not necessarily mean an increase.

I want you to go back to the tax credit. Have you stopped it? What will happen to Dangote and others? Also, you say you don’t tax investments, what about property developers?

Yes, we don’t tax them; don’t forget that the property developers buy iron and pay VAT; there are people staying in hotels who we collect VAT from. What you give here is what we take there. Property development, we will not because it is not our intention to tax investment. Now, when you talk about tax credits, no matter how good a programme is, the first thing is that it must have its roots in law. The remit of NRS or as it were then, FIRS, is to assess, collect and account. Appropriation is not part of the remit of the NRS or FIRS. So, to give tax credit is an appropriation act because you spent the money but our remit is to collect and give it to the constitutional body that will share that money which is FAAC. When you now say, ‘Dangote, your tax, go and use it’, I don’t want to say it is unconstitutional but there are issues. I lack the competence as the NRS chairman to know the quality of the roads or how the roads are done. Whatever their taxes are, let them pay to the government and let the government through the proper appropriation pay the money, whether for roads or any other thing.

On companies that fail to comply with remittances they have already deducted from their staff salaries, does the law cover penalties for them? Also, how do people go about the personal tax filing system at the end of the year? Is it digital, or do you have to go to the offices? Finally, it has been said repeatedly that bank accounts will not be touched, but there is a memo from a state government regarding deductions from people who fail to remit. Can you clarify this?

You answered your question with your other question. The law is very clear on companies that deduct taxes and fail to remit them. Let me explain why it is very difficult for anyone to collect now and not remit. Don’t forget that the salary you pay is a deductible expense. The only way to validate that salary expense is to show evidence of tax remittance on that salary. So, the system is self-regulated. There was one question on the cost of collection. If you remember at the beginning, one of the reasons we consolidated the law was because NUPRC law allowed it to collect taxes – 4% royalty. When we consolidated the law, we removed the cost of collection and replaced it with cost of operation. It is the duty of the government to fund its agencies. And the explanation I was giving then is, ‘what about police that don’t collect anything?’ And they are the law enforcement agents. That is what we are trying to do, to make sure that regulatory bodies focus on their mandate, not on generating revenue. I do not generate revenue; I only collect revenue. My work is to ensure that businesses and individuals do well. When they do well, revenue increases automatically. I just drive compliance and if people are doing well, we will do well. That is why our focus is on economic prosperity. Remove obstacles from businesses so they can thrive, and then tax right. Also, your money in your bank is your asset. Nobody will tax that. Nobody has the right to tax your bank balance. That’s why banks will tell you that you must have a signature. And even if there would be anything, the best anybody can do through the court or following the law, is to put a lien on your account so that you will come and explain. But nobody has the right to say debit the account. The fact that you have money in your account does not mean it is profit. There’s a difference between your cash balance and your profit.

Can you clarify Nigeria’s tax administration and the French digital transformation deal? Are there concerns about foreign access to Nigeria’s tax data? And why France?

Part of my role is to collaborate with international tax bodies because I have international tax departments. This is not only with France—we also have agreements with South Africa, the UK, the US and other countries, including Kenya. There’s something they call transfer pricing. The same thing I have done locally with the diesel supplier; the French people will send experts to their branches here to come and work; they send equipment to their place here. This has to do with transfer pricing. When multinational companies operate across borders, pricing affects income reporting. These agreements are tools to ensure fairness. Now, our laws do not even allow Nigerians to get data of another Nigerian here, it’s like a medical record – unless you have a court order that is properly served; you can’t ask me to send anyone’s tax clearance to anybody. No country has unfettered access to Nigeria’s tax data. Tax information is protected by law, just like medical records. Nobody can access tax data without proper legal authorisation. The idea that foreign governments can control Nigeria’s tax data is incorrect. These collaborations are technical tools to help us do our work better. That is the purpose of the agreement.