Chairman of the presidential fiscal policy and tax reforms committee, Taiwo Oyedele, stated that the federal government will not sacrifice Nigeria’s future to protect those who have avoided taxes for years.
Speaking at the January business breakfast of the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) in Lagos, he addressed the resistance to tax reforms and the country’s inadequate revenue performance.
“That is one tax from about 60 million people, compared to Nigeria’s 240 million people,” Oyedele said. He highlighted that South Africa generated over N60 trillion from personal income tax alone in 2024, surpassing Nigeria’s total tax revenue from all sources combined.
While noting that South Africa’s per capita income is higher, Oyedele emphasised that Nigeria has the potential to significantly improve its 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 taxes 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.”
Recall that President Tinubu, on June 26, 2025, signed the four tax reform bills into law. Despite calls to stop its implementation, the new tax laws commence as scheduled on January 1.
