Taiwo Oyedele, the chair of the presidential fiscal policy and tax reforms committee, stated that the federal government will not jeopardize Nigeria’s future to protect individuals who have benefitted for years without paying taxes.
Oyedele recently spoke at the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (FNCCI) January business breakfast in Lagos, where he discussed opposition to ongoing tax reforms and the country’s poor revenue performance.
In comparison to South Africa, he stated that the country generated more than N60 trillion (naira equivalent) in personal income tax alone by 2024.
The chairman stated that the amount exceeds Nigeria’s entire 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 conceding that South Africa’s per capita income is larger than Nigeria’s, he maintained that Nigeria has the potential to greatly increase 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 legislation into law.
Despite efforts to halt implementation, the new tax laws go into effect as planned on January 1.
