Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy, says the federal government will not compromise Nigeria’s future to protect tax evaders who have profited from years of not paying taxes .
Oyedele disclosed this at the January business breakfast of the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) held recently in Lagos, where he spoke on the resistance to the ongoing tax reforms and the country’s weak revenue performance over the years.
Referring to South African fiscal policy, Mr. Oyedele stated that the country generated over N60 trillion, Naira equivalent, from personal income tax alone in the 2024 financial year.
He said the amount surpasses Nigeria’s total tax revenue aggregations from all sources combined. This includes corporate income tax, value-added tax (VAT), petroleum profit tax, 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.”
The Nigerian Tax Chairman stated that while South Africa’s per capita income is higher than Nigeria’s, despite Nigeria’s higher population and huge earnings potential, Mr. Taiwo revealed that Nigeria has the earning potential to significantly boost personal income tax.
“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.
“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.”
According to Mr. Taiwo, the wide 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 that they never paid taxes.
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.”
President Tinubu, on June 26, 2025, signed the four tax reform bills into law; two were implemented last year, and the latter two were implemented on January 1, 2026.
Amid the oppositions and relevant stakeholders’ calls to withdraw its implementation and further review it, consult more widely before re-introducing the tax laws, the federal government has been adamant on the new fiscal policies.
