The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has said that the current tax laws in Nigeria are unconducive for growth.
Oyedele said this on Thursday at the inaugural Economic Roundtable/2025 macroeconomic outlook event of rating firm Agusto & Co., held in Lagos.
After months, the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the four tax reform bills for a second reading and referred them to the Finance Committee of the House for further legislative work, including a public hearing.
Speaking at the event where he was a keynote speaker, Oyedele said, “We found that Nigeria’s tax system is unconducive for growth. We are trying to grow, but we’re struggling, and the tax system is holding us down. It has plenty of taxes and taxing agencies everywhere you turn.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re small or big, whether you are formal or informal; we tax anything and everything that moves. If it keeps moving, we tax it even again. We tax it even more. We’re speaking to small business owners, and one woman said something to me that I will not forget. She said that it feels like the Nigerian system and the government are feasting on businesses.
“And I challenged anyone who wants to do a social experiment. Just do a banner; anything that comes to mind will be tailoring. Just write it and place it by the road. Find a plastic chair, sit back about two meters away, and watch what will happen within two days.
“I promise you, at least five agencies will show up, from business premises to advert levy to permit. You have not even found one customer. One of my hopes and dreams for this country is that in my lifetime, you put up that banner and you receive calls from different government agencies, one asking you whether you know about credit facilities for your sector. We have this capacity development for people doing your business. Would you be interested? Do you need any access to this and that? Let’s support ourselves to prosper.”
On the foreign exchange, he maintained that the fiscal authorities were in good stead to handle the situation, but it wasn’t a popular idea.
“Even this whole idea of the parallel market running away from the official market, I think that is a problem that fiscal can fix, although that proposal is not very popular. Now, you see, if we impose a tax on any premium you have in the parallel market, and I say today, anytime you go to the parallel market, any premium you earn above the official rate is your excess tax, and you must pay within seven days. What I’ve done is I’ve taken away because this parallel and official market thing is a bigger danger than naira volatility, and you can fix that problem permanently with fiscal policy, but then people will bring politics into it anyway. I think we’ll get there,” he said.
In her comments, the Managing Director of Agusto & Co., Yinka Adelekan, said, “We are at a pivotal moment in history where there are disruptions to globalisation, technological innovation, sustainability, and geopolitical shifts that intercept in ways that would shape our collective future and national development.”
Renowned economist Dr Doyin Salami called for efficient and effective spending by the government, lamenting the instability of the economy.
He said, “For me, stability in any economy has four conditions. Number one is that output growth must exceed population growth…in my book by a factor of 2x. We don’t know the size of the population, so we don’t know the size of the population growth. So 2x is whatever you make of it. Second, inflation must be low and falling. The threshold for inflation in Nigeria is between 10 and 15 per cent. The third piece is the fiscal position. We are in excess of the Fiscal Responsibility Act provision, and we really need to bring that down. The fourth piece, which is the only piece we are doing well on, is the external account.
“Inflation is high, but food security is an even more troubling piece of that.”
Financial analyst and Group Chief Executive Officer of Cowry Assets Management, Johnson Chukwu, described the economic posture of the government as “long on policy but weak on execution.”
