Feature/OPED
FIRS Circular on Advance Payment of Company Taxes and the Issues Therein
By Moruff Adenekan
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) recently issued a circular calling on corporate organisations to “commence payment of their annual returns earlier than their due dates, apart from their normal monthly obligations.”
According to that circular, dated 22 April, 2020 and titled Update on Palliative Measures to Cushion Effect of COVID-19 on Taxpayers, the federal tax collector sad that this appeal “has become necessary in order to ease some of the cashflow gaps being experienced by governments at this critical time.”
The circular went on to rationalise this call thus: “As is currently obvious, the economic downturn that resulted from the global shutdown occasioned largely by the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to put pressure on revenue generating agencies including the FIRS, thereby straining governments to bridge budget funding gaps.”
Muhammad Nami, the executive chairman of the agency, who personally signed the circular, said the directive is specifically addressed to the operators in select sectors, that, according to him, are experiencing a boom as a result of the effects of the pandemic.
According to him, “we wish to acknowledge that some sectors such as Telcos, financial institutions, e-commerce, supermarkets, manufacturers/processors of certain products etc are experiencing a boom due to the increased transactions as a result of the lockdown or even despite the pandemic.”
Knowing the way our government and its agencies work, we know that it is just a matter of time before this appeal, according to the circular, becomes a directive, order or an edict that will seek to criminalise and punish any corporate body that fails to comply with it. But before we even get there, let us critically examine this appeal by the FIRS.
To begin with, these corporate bodies, as is even acknowledged by the circular, already have their monthly filings that they do to the FIRS, and this is not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic realities. What the agency is saying is that these monthly returns are no longer enough for it and so needs some more.
One of the issues with this circular is how can the FIRS enforce this so-called appeal? The law has already stipulated the time that these corporate bodies must do their filings and any effort put at trying to coax these corporates, even if the agency enacts an edict to that end, would surely be resisted by these companies, and I see a long tortuous litigation as a result.
Again, the circular displayed some kind of ignorance on the interconnectivity of sectors in an economy. When the economy is booming, all sectors experience a boom and when it is at a standstill or semi-standstill, hardly does any sector, formal or informal, get exonerated.
All sectors and players in this economy feel the gloom occasioned by the COVID-19 lockdown so, one may ask, where is the increased earnings that the FIRS is talking about, coming from?
Let us take the financial sector for instance. The banks may be doing more transactions – ATMs, transfers, POS payments etc – now but to what amount? People, at lockdown, are making more online payments but they are mostly for food, groceries and other essentials, which are mostly minute purchases. Is FIRS telling us that there are people still buying and paying for lands and cars or building houses, or taking chieftaincy titles today?
If you take a look outside your window, you may have noticed an increase in traffic of delivery men on our roads during this lockdown and this may make you think that the e-commerce companies are making a killing this period.
After reading this piece, take another look at the delivery men and you would see that they are mostly delivering food, groceries and other essentials.
The fact is that e-commerce is much more than groceries and this category of trade does not make up to five percent of the e-commerce players revenue.
Even the groceries and other essentials are not even exclusive on the e-commerce portals as markets, supermarkets and pharmacies are open in all neighbourhoods and take a substantial part of the food and groceries business.
Suppliers, most of whom do not have exemption letters, find it impossible to move even groceries and food items to the e-commerce warehouses as security agents do not let them move around.
The e-commerce operators and their logistics partners are not even allowed to move around things like electronics, gadgets and other non-essential goods that used to make up the bulk of their earnings.
How can these companies even compute their taxes in advance since the company tax is determined by the aggregate income less all costs for the year? Are they supposed to guestimate these figures to arrive at an amount payable to FIRS? What if their guestimate short-changes them? We all know that it is not the speed that the FIRS come for the balance in case of an underpayment that it uses in refunding an excess.
Let us even examine the reason for this “appeal” as canvassed by the FIRS “to ease some of the cash flow gaps being experienced by governments.”
The circular admits that the governments are experiencing the cash crunch effects of the lockdown. The question here is why do the governments look towards the companies in dealing with cash flow gaps instead of looking inwards on how to cut governance costs?
How can the government allow our elected public officers to be living in obscene wealth, moving about in convoys of expensive cars, appointing hundreds of aides, throwing expensive birthday parties in Dubai and London, and earning millions in allowances at a time that the global and national economies are experiencing a downturn?
At a time, Nigerian government is appealing for support in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the same government, for example, is importing the 2020 model of Toyota Camry for each of the 360 members of the House of Representatives.
Instead of cutting the cost of governance, the government is sending the FIRS to snuff out the little air that is sustaining the companies that are already gasping for breath.
It is a pity that while governments, the world over, are looking for ways of cushioning the effects of COVID-19 pandemic for corporates, the Nigerian government, through its agencies, are adding to the burden of these companies.
The government should better ask the Federal Inland Revenue Service to rescind its appeal for advance payment of the company tax, and look for ways to cut the cost of governance in its quest to bridge the prevailing budget funding gaps.
Moruff Adenekan is a public relations practitioner based in Lagos
By Blaise Udunze
When the federal government approved the write-off of about $1.42 billion and N5.57 trillion in legacy debts owed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) to the Federation Account, it was rightly described as a landmark decision. After years of disputes, reconciliations, and contested figures, Nigeria’s most important revenue institution was, at least on paper, given a cleaner slate.
The approval, contained in a report prepared by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and presented at the last year November meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), effectively wiped out 96 percent of NNPC’s dollar-denominated obligations and 88 percent of its naira liabilities accumulated up to December 31, 2024. It resolved long-standing balances arising from crude oil liftings, joint venture royalties, production-sharing contracts, and related arrangements.
Judging it critically, the decision carries both promise and peril, but can be viewed from the perspective of a country desperate to restore confidence in public finance management. It offers an opportunity to reset relationships, clean up accounting records, and move forward under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). Yet, it also exposes deep structural weaknesses in Nigeria’s oil revenue governance, weaknesses that, if left unaddressed, could turn today’s debt relief into tomorrow’s fiscal regret.
Context matters. The debt write-off comes not during a period of revenue abundance, but at a time when Nigeria’s upstream revenue performance is under severe strain. According to the same NUPRC document, the commission missed its approved monthly revenue target for November 2025 by N544.76 billion, collecting only N660.04 billion against a projected N1.204 trillion.
Royalty receipts, the backbone of upstream revenue, tell an even starker story. It is alarming that against an approved monthly royalty projection of N1.144 trillion, only N605.26 billion was collected, leaving a shortfall of N538.92 billion. Cumulatively, by the end of November 2025, the revenue gap stood at N5.65 trillion, with royalty collections alone falling short by N5.63 trillion. These figures underscore how fragile Nigeria’s fiscal position remains, even as trillions of naira in historical obligations are being written off.
To be fair, the debts forgiven were not incurred overnight. They are the product of years of disputed remittances, lacking transparent accounting practices, and overlapping institutional roles, particularly under the pre-PIA regime. As petroleum economist Prof. Wumi Iledare has repeatedly observed, the former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation combined regulatory, commercial, and operational functions, making revenue reconciliation cumbersome and frequently contested.
That legacy continues to haunt the system, as witnessed with the ongoing dispute between NNPC Ltd and Periscope Consulting, the audit firm engaged by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, over an alleged $42.37 billion under-remittance between 2011 and 2017, which illustrates how unresolved the past remains. Though NNPC insists all revenues were properly accounted for as claimed, Periscope maintains that significant gaps persist, forcing FAAC to mandate yet another reconciliation exercise. This recurring pattern of audits, counterclaims, and stalemates has weakened trust in the federation revenue system and eroded confidence among states that depend on oil proceeds for survival.
Crucially, the debt write-off does not mean NNPC has turned a corner financially. Statutory obligations incurred between January and October 2025 remain on the books, amounting to about $56.8 million and N1.02 trillion. Although part of the dollar component was recovered during the period under review, the accumulation of new liabilities so soon after reconciliation raises uncomfortable questions about whether old habits are being replaced with genuine fiscal discipline.
More troubling still is what NNPC’s own audited financial statements reveal about its internal financial health. Despite recording a profit after tax of N5.4 trillion on revenues of N45.1 trillion in 2024, the company’s inter-company debts ballooned to N30.3 trillion, representing a 70 per cent increase within a single year. This is not debt owed to external creditors but largely obligations between NNPC and its subsidiaries, effectively the company owing itself.
Records show that of 32 subsidiaries, only eight are debt-free, and the rest, particularly the refineries, trading arms, and gas infrastructure units, remain heavily indebted to the parent company. There was a recurring cycle where profitable units subsidise chronically underperforming ones, and accountability steadily erodes because cash that should fund maintenance, expansion, and efficiency improvements is instead trapped in internal receivables.
The refineries offer a stark illustration whereby the Port Harcourt Refining Company alone owed N4.22 trillion in 2024, more than double its 2023 figure, while Kaduna and Warri refineries followed closely, with debts of N2.39 trillion and N2.06 trillion respectively. Despite the repeated failed turnaround maintenance with many years of rehabilitation spending, none have operated sustainably at commercially viable levels. Their continued dependence on financial support from the parent company highlights the cost of postponing difficult restructuring decisions.
And, for this reason, international observers have long warned about these structural weaknesses. One of the critics, the World Bank, has repeatedly flagged NNPC as a major source of revenue leakages. It further noted that the persistent gaps between reported earnings and actual remittances to the Federation Account. Even after the removal of petrol subsidies, the bank observed that NNPC remitted only about 50 per cent of the revenue gains, using the rest to offset past arrears. Such practices, while perhaps defensible in internal cash management terms, undermine fiscal transparency and weaken Nigeria’s macroeconomic credibility.
This is why the central issue is not the debt write-off itself, but what follows it because debt forgiveness is not reform. Without firm safeguards, it risks entrenching the very behaviours that created the problem in the first place. As Prof. Omowumi Iledare has warned, the scale and pace of the inter-company debt build-up represent a governance test rather than a mere accounting anomaly. Allowing subsidiaries to operate indefinitely without settling obligations is incompatible with the idea of a commercially driven national oil company.
The fact remains that if NNPC wants to function as a true commercial holding company under the PIA, it must enforce strict settlement timelines, restructure or divest non-viable subsidiaries, while clearly separating legacy debts from new obligations. With this, it holds subsidiary leadership accountable for cash flow and profitability. Independent, real-time audits and transparent reporting must become routine features of governance, not emergency responses triggered by controversy.
There is also a broader national implication. At a time when Nigerians are being asked to accept higher taxes, reduced subsidies, and fiscal tightening, large-scale debt write-offs without visible accountability risk undermining the legitimacy of the entire revenue system. Citizens cannot be expected to bear heavier burdens while systemic inefficiencies in the country’s most strategic sector persist.
Of a truth, the cancellation of NNPC’s legacy debts could mark a turning point in Nigeria’s fiscal governance, but only if it is not treated as its conclusion but the beginning of reform.
If discipline, transparency, and commercial accountability follow, the decision may yet help reposition NNPC as a profitable, credible, and PIA-compliant institution. If not, today’s clean slate will simply defer the reckoning until the next reconciliation, the next audit dispute, and the next fiscal crisis.
Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: [email protected]
By Dr Austin Orette
The grandiosity of Nigerians when they discuss events and situations can be very funny. If the leaders use this kind of creativity in proffering solutions, we may be able to solve some of the problems that plague Nigeria perennially.
There seems to be a sublime affectation for new lingos when the system is being set to punish Nigerians. It is a kind of Orwellian speak.
Recently, there was no electricity throughout the country. The usual culprit and government spoke; people came out to tell us the power failure was due to the collapse of the National grid. Does it really matter what is collapsing? This is just an attempt by some government bureaucrats to sound intelligent.
Intelligence is becoming a borrowed commodity from the IMF or World Bank. What does it mean when you tell Nigerians that the national grid collapsed? Is that supposed to be a reassurance, or it is said to give the assurance that they know something about the anemic electricity, and we should get used to the darkness. This is a language that is vague and beckons the consumer to stop complaining. Does that statement mean anything to Nigerians who pay bills and don’t see the electricity they paid for? If they see it, it comes with an irregular voltage that destroys their newly purchased appliances. Just tell or stay quiet like in the past.
Telling us that a grid collapse is a lie. We have no national grid. Do these people know how silly their language sounds? Nigeria produces less than 10,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of 200 million people. How do you permutate this to give constant electricity to 200 million people? It is an insult to call this low output a national grid. What is so national about using a generator to supply electricity to 200 million people? It is simple mathematics. If you calculate this to the minute, it should not surprise you that every Nigerian will receive electricity for the duration of the blink of an eye. They are paying for total darkness, and someone is telling them they have an electricity grid.
If you can call the 10,000-megawatt national grid collapsed, it means you don’t have the mind set to solve the electricity problem in Nigeria.
To put it in perspective is to understand the basic fact that the electrical output of Nigeria is pre-industrial. Without acknowledging this fact, we will never find solutions as every mediocre will come and confuse Nigeria with lingos that make them sound important.
It is very shameful for those in the know to always use grandiose language to obfuscate the real issues.
South Africa with a population of sixty million produces about 200,000 megawatts of electricity daily. Nigeria produces less than 10,000 megawatts. Why South Africa makes it easy to lift the poor from poverty, Nigeria is trying to tax the poor into poverty.
The architects of the new tax plan saw the poor as rich because they could afford a generator.
A non-existent subsidy was removed, and the price of fuel went through the roof. Now the government says they are rich. What will they get in return for this tax extraction? Why do successive Nigerian governments always think the best way to develop Nigeria is to slap the poor into poverty? What are the avenues for upward mobility when youth corps members are suddenly seen as rich taxpayers? Do these people know how difficult it is to start a business in Nigeria?
After all the rigmarole from Abuja to my village, I cannot get a government certificate without a-shake down from government bureaucrats and area boys. The government that is so unfriendly to business wants to tax my non-existing businesses. Are these people in their right state of mind? Why do they think that taxing the poor is their best revenue plan? A plan like this can only come from a group of people who have no inkling of what Nigerians are going through. People can’t eat and the government is asking them to share their meager rations with potbellied people in Abuja.
Teach the people how to fish, then you can share in their harvest. If an individual does what the government is doing to Nigerians, it will be called robbery, and the individual will be in prison. When the government taxes people, there is a reciprocal exchange. What is being done in Nigeria does not represent fair exchange.
Nigerians have never gotten anything good from their government except individual wealth that is doled out in Abuja for the selected few.
The question is, will Nigerians have a good electricity supply? NO. Will they have security of persons and properties? No. Will they have improved health care? NO. Will there be good roads? No. Will they have good schools and good education? No.
Taxation is not good governance. A policy like this should never be rushed without adequate studies. Once again, our legislators have let us down. They have never shown the people the reason they were elected and to be re-elected. They are not playing their roles as the watchdog and representatives of the people. Anyone who voted for this tax bill deserves to lose their positions as Senators and Members of the House of Representatives.
We are not in a military regime anymore. Nigerians must start learning how to exercise their franchise. This taxation issue must be litigated at the ballot box. The members of the National Assembly have shown by their assent that they don’t represent the people.
In a normal democracy, taxation without representation should never be tolerated. They must be voted out of office. We have a responsibility and duty to use our voting power to fight unjust laws. Taxation without representation is unjust. Those voted into power will never respect the citizens until the citizens learn to punish errant politicians by voting them out of office. This responsibility is sacred and must be exercised with diligence.
Dr Austin Orette writes from Houston, Texas
For many Nigerian families, GOtv has become more than a television service. It is part of the daily routine. It is what people unwind with after a long day, what keeps children entertained on quiet weekend mornings, and what brings households together during football matches, movie nights, and festive celebrations. Over the years, GOtv has blended naturally into these everyday moments, shaping the way Nigerians enjoy entertainment at home.
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The beauty of GOtv is its range. Children enjoy their cartoons and animated shows, parents relax with movies and telenovelas, sports lovers stay connected to live games and highlights, and music and lifestyle channels keep the energy lively. Whether it is catching up on the news, finding something light after work, or choosing a family movie for the weekend, GOtv fits naturally into everyday Nigerian life.
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GOtv understands the way Nigerians watch television. Weeknights come with easy to follow entertainment, weekends offer longer movies and marathons, and festive seasons arrive with special programming that brings everyone together. The schedule is practical, familiar, and aligned with the pace of Nigerian homes.
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