Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the presidential fiscal policy and tax reforms committee, says the federal government will not compromise Nigeria’s future to protect those who have profited for years without paying taxes.
Oyedele spoke at the January business breakfast of the
Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) held recently in
Lagos, where he addressed resistance to ongoing tax reforms and the country’s
weak revenue performance.
Drawing a comparison with South Africa, he said the country
generated over N60 trillion (naira equivalent) from personal income tax alone
in 2024.
The chairman said the amount exceeds Nigeria’s total tax
revenue from all sources combined, including petroleum profit tax, corporate
income tax, value-added tax (VAT), and taxes collected by federal, state and
local governments.
“That is one tax from about 60 million people, compared to
Nigeria’s 240 million people,” Oyedele said.
While acknowledging that South Africa’s per capita income is
higher than Nigeria’s, he argued that Nigeria still has the capacity to
significantly boost personal income tax collection.
“If you take the top 60 million people in Nigeria based on
income, it will be comparable to the per capita income of South Africa,” the
committee chairman said.
“Let’s say we can’t collect 60 trillion, why not 30? Guess
how much we collected? It was under N3 trillion. Something is wrong, the math
is not adding up.”
Oyedele said the sharp disparity explains why tax reforms
continue to face a lot of pushback from certain quarters.
“This is one of the reasons why we find the motivation to
keep going, because the people fighting the reforms are not telling you why
they’re fighting them. It is because they made money for so long, they never
paid taxes,” he said.
“We are designing a system that says nobody will be above the law anymore. You will fight it because it is hard to pay tax anywhere in the world. We understand that, but we will not compromise the future of the country because what is at stake is much bigger than any of us.”
On June 26, 2025, Tinubu signed the four tax reform bills
into law.
Despite calls to stop its implementation, the new tax laws
commence as scheduled on January 1.
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