The suspended 5% excise duty on telecommunications services has been removed in the new tax reform laws by President Bola Tinubu, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr Aminu Maida, has confirmed.
Speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday, Maida said: “The excise duty, which was 5% or so, is no longer there. Before, it was suspended, but now the president has been magnanimous to remove it entirely.
“I was in a room when it was raised, and he said, No, no, no, we cannot put this on Nigerians. I was very pleased when the bills came out and we saw his words were followed through.”
The 5% excise duty is part of a broader tax reform initiative under a bill titled “A Bill for an Act to Repeal Certain Acts on Taxation and Consolidate the Legal Frameworks relating to Taxation and Enact the Nigeria Tax Act to Provide for Taxation of Income, Transactions, and Instruments, and Related Matters”.
The proposed tax has faced strong opposition since it was first introduced in 2022 under former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
The public backlash led to its suspension in July 2023 by President Bola Tinubu, who cited concerns about its impact on consumers and the economy.
With Nigeria’s telecom sector central to economic activity and digital inclusion, Maida said the removal of the duty would ease pressure on subscribers while supporting wider growth in the industry.
He noted that the commission was pursuing reforms anchored on transparency, accountability and better consumer protection.
He explained that the regulator was now complementing traditional rule-based oversight with behavioural economics, especially through the disclosure of information that would allow consumers and operators to make better decisions.
One of the initiatives, he said, is a public map of network performance, to be released in September, that will display independent data on download speeds, latency and other quality indicators.
He added that “There will also be a quarterly network performance report based on user data,” he said. “It extends accountability beyond mobile operators to also include infrastructure providers who play a critical role in reliability.”
Maida said corporate governance would be used as a tool to strengthen the industry. “Transparent, well-governed companies attract investment and perform better,” he said, adding that the goal was to lay the foundation for a Nigerian telecom company that is wholly owned, well-run and globally competitive.
He pointed to reforms such as the conclusion of the NIN-SIM audit, the settlement of USSD debt disputes, the transition to end-user billing and the launch of a Major Incident Reporting Portal as evidence of progress.
He stressed that the telecom policy of 2000, which focused on breaking the monopoly and introducing competition, had achieved its purpose but now required revision.