By Chukwuma Umeorah
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has said that it is working to address key challenges such as infrastructure demands, stakeholder awareness, and cross-border integration ahead of the official launch of its national electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) platform in July 2025.
This was made known during a sector-specific stakeholder engagement with players in the oil and gas industry held in Lagos on Monday, as part of FIRS’ phased rollout of the e-invoicing initiative. The effort is aimed at transforming Nigeria’s tax administration landscape through digitisation.
Speaking at the event, Acting Director of Tax Automation at FIRS, Mike Adoga, explained that the e-invoicing system will ensure real-time visibility of transactions across sectors, thereby improving tax compliance.
“This e-Invoicing is about the real-time electronic exchange of invoices between businesses and customers and FIRS is powering this with its own technology. The implications and benefits are already known to FIRS.”
While the immediate tax focus is on Value Added Tax (VAT) at the current rate of 7.5 per cent the platform is designed to support other tax categories including withholding tax, company income tax, and personal income tax, in alignment with provisions of the newly approved tax law.
“Withholding tax, for instance, is like an advanced payment of taxes. That information is also going to be transmitted within the invoicing ecosystem,” Adoga added.
However, despite the progress, he admitted that the initiative is not without its hurdles. According to him, educating taxpayers, building trust, and deploying the massive infrastructure needed for such a system have posed notable challenges. He noted that the FIRS was addressing these challenges through various stakeholders engagements programmes.
“Infrastructure is a challenge because we’ve had to do some forecasting on how much storage, server and compute power we need. If we want every transaction happening in a bank or every call made on a telco reported for tax purposes, you can imagine the scale of infrastructure required,” he said.
Ahead of the launch in July, Adoga reaffirmed commitment to continuous stakeholder engagement to ensure widespread understanding and adoption. “We are using avenues like this to bridge knowledge gaps.
Everybody has some sort of idea of what electronic invoicing is, but there are still misconceptions,” Adoga noted.
The e-invoicing system, according to FIRS, is not just a technological upgrade but a critical reform tool that aims to plug revenue leakages, improve compliance, and strengthen Nigeria’s fiscal landscape in line with global best practices.
Director of the Technology Department at FIRS, Richard Kimeku, emphasised that the platform is not a payment system but a tool for transparency and accurate data collection.
“The e-invoicing is about creating transparency, greater levels of transparency in tax administration. It’s about getting transactional data from taxpayers. Things like turnover suppression will no longer be there because it’s now transferring the visibility,” he noted.
He added that the digital system aligns with broader national goals, including enhancing market intelligence and improving security through data analytics.
“The data could be used across so many sectors, even in security. Businesses can also use the data to understand market and purchasing trends,” he said.
The phased rollout began with large taxpayers and is gradually cascading down to medium and small enterprises. Kimeku clarified that while the system will go live nationally in July, participation is not yet mandatory.
“It’s a gradual approach. We started with large taxpayers, then medium taxpayers. Once it’s adopted by the large taxpayers, we move on from there,” he explained.
The Lead Consultant on the project, Sadiq Arogundade, confirmed that the system is ready with several large taxpayers having indicated interest for the pilot phase.
He also revealed that the project is adopting a framework that ensures flexibility and cross-border compatibility, enabling seamless integration with global invoicing standards.
“We are creating a trust ecosystem. It’s a 100 per cent API-driven system, Rather than building any commercial solution ourselves, we want to stand as regulators and then enable businesses that are interested to be part of the ecosystem to build that commercial solution that is a form of add-on for businesses to be able to use the electronic invoicing efficiently and integration will be seamless,” Arogundade explained.
He further assured taxpayers of flexibility. “Even if the system is connected directly into your native system, you still have that flexibility to choose whether you want to report in real-time or on your own time.”
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