By Emmanuel Orjih
Joseph, my 20-year-old relative, lives in my country home in the village. Joseph is unmarried, has no children, lives rent-free, works in my gardens, and ensures a human presence in my village house. For this, he earns N75,000 a month, while working on getting admitted into a tertiary institution to further his studies. Stories like Joseph’s are common across Nigeria’s landscape but are rarely visible where policy is made.
So at a tax explainer event with senior FIRS officers in Abuja, I asked whether Joseph would pay tax under the new tax regime which I call: “Bola’s Tax”. The answer was no. Joseph, they said, would not pay any tax.
Public policy should always be able to withstand its own arithmetic, so I asked them to show me how. And that was how the calculation began.
They listed all the deductibles Joseph was said to be entitled to. We examined each one carefully and matched them against Joseph’s real circumstances. After doing so, they agreed that the only deductible Joseph actually qualified for was pension.
Pension for Joseph is 8 per cent, assuming compliance with statutory pension requirements. We ran the numbers. This resulted in a reduction of about N6,000, bringing Joseph’s taxable income to N69,000 per month and placing him squarely within the tax bracket of Bola’s Tax.
At that point, the officials performed a public U-turn. They revised their earlier position and accepted that Joseph, who earns N75,000 a month and lives a subsistence life, would indeed pay tax under the new regime.
They accepted because the logic left them no alternative. I did not debate. I did not raise my voice. I simply followed the framework they presented and asked careful, sequential questions. I used their logic on them. And it led to a conclusion that could not be avoided:
Nigeria’s poor are about to start paying taxes.
So who are Nigeria’s poor? If any institution has the authority to define poverty globally, it is the World Bank. I would know a bit about this, given that I am ex-World Bank, having worked at its Washington DC HQ and with several Southeast Asian country operations.
The World Bank estimates that 143 million Nigerians are “poor”. This determination is derived from a country-specific poverty line for LMICs (Lower Middle Income Countries). For Nigeria, that poverty line stands at approximately N190,000 per month, based on the World Bank’s daily poverty threshold of $4.20 converted to a monthly figure. Anyone earning below this amount is considered poor.
- Everyone earning less than N190,000 a month in Nigeria is poor
- Bola’s Tax will take money from Nigerians earning N67,000 a month.
- Joseph earns N75,000 a month.
- Joseph is poor
- Bola’s Tax takes money from poor people like Joseph
These are 5 irrefutable facts.
No matter what political leaders, their supporters, and their armies of journalists and influencers may say about the poor being protected from Bola’s Tax therefore, the arithmetic tells a very clear and a very different story.
Even their own official communications acknowledge this reality – perhaps inadvertently. One of the stated objectives of Bola’s Tax is to “widen the tax base.” And those are not my words.
Policy language often sounds neutral until its consequences are made explicit. Widening the tax base simply means bringing more Nigerians into the tax net. Nigeria’s wealthy have long been within the tax net. If the wealthy are already there, then the widening must necessarily reach downward. There are only three possibilities therefore: the poor, livestock, or ghosts. I suspect we all know which of the three it is.
Given this, Nigeria’s poor are entitled to ask further questions. Questions like:
What will be done with the additional taxes collected from people like Joseph?
To answer this question, we need to look at government’s antecedents with similar public funds:
A. What do they do with Nigeria’s budget?
B. What did they do with the billions of dollars in external loans they have collected?
C. What do they do with fuel subsidy “savings”?
D. What do they do with earnings from crude oil revenue, including the forward sales?
E. What did they do with the billions of dollars that foreign development partners have delivered?
F. What do they do with the huge IGR they collect daily, weekly, monthly, and annually?
G. What did they do with the ever-present and ever-increasing VAT?
H. What did they do with all the stolen loot they recovered from Abacha, Emefiele, etc?
Wisdom demands that we judge government not by promises or by rhetoric, but by patterns and antecedents. On the basis of this, Nigeria’s poor are justifiably apprehensive that if Bola’s Tax is collected, whatever happened to the 8 pools of public funds listed above, will also likely happen to monies pooled from Bola’s Tax.
Finally, it is well established in macroeconomic and development economics that governments should exercise restraint in raising taxes when an economy is experiencing even one of the following conditions:
A. High inflation
B. Falling real wages
C. Shrinking or weak GDP growth
D. Rising unemployment
E. A large informal sector
F. High poverty rates
G. Weak social safety nets
H. Low wages and unstable earnings
I. Weak administrative capacity
Nigeria is experiencing all nine simultaneously. In such conditions, restraint is a responsibility, even a duty, particularly toward the poor.
When inflation is high and real incomes are falling, raising taxes reduces the purchasing power of the poor. When growth is weak, higher taxes suppress investment and job creation. When unemployment and informality are widespread, aggressive taxation pushes vulnerable households further to the margins.
In these conditions, tax increases do not reliably raise sustainable revenue. Instead, they shrink the tax base, increase non-compliance, and deepen poverty. This is not ideology. It is evidence, observed repeatedly across developing economies.
Sound fiscal policy requires sequencing:
- Stabilize inflation
- Support real wages
- Restore growth and expand social protection
- Strengthen administrative capacity
Only after these foundations are in place does broad-based taxation become effective and fair. Anything else shifts adjustment costs downward, where the poor are least able to absorb them. Implementing a tax regime that brings your poor population into the tax bracket when all 9 conditions are present is akin to national economic suicide.
This naturally leads us to the point where we must then ask: why are these national economic risks even being taken at all, and to what end?
A. So misappropriation of public funds can continue without consequence?
B. So inflated and padded contracts can keep rolling year after year?
C. So oversized and loud convoys, motorcades, and security entourages can continue to consume public money?
D. So offices unknown to the law, including the first lady office, and now the office of the first son, can continue to be brazenly funded from public coffers?
E. So political elites can continue to rely on public-funded foreign healthcare while Nigerian public hospitals serving the poor decay?
F. So judicial outcomes can continue to be improperly influenced and financed?
G. So public-funded political violence can continue to undermine democratic participation?
H. So elections can continue to be distorted using public resources?
I. So security votes funded by the public can remain opaque?
J. So abandoned projects can be endlessly recycled and re-awarded for bigger amounts at taxpayer expense?
K. So emergency public procurement can continue to bypass due process?
L. So patronage networks that deliver public funds to value depreciators can persist?
M. So public funded luxury allowances can expand while citizens are told to endure hardship?
N. So schools serving the poor can continue to collapse while children of public officials jet off to study abroad on public funds?
O. So cost of commissioning and launching a project continues to compete with cost of the project itself?
P. So broken systems can be substituted rather than fixed at taxpayer cost?
Q. So bloated bureaucracies funded by taxpayers can persist with thousands of redundant and idle workers?
R. So competence can continue to be subordinated to loyalty on the tab of the taxpayer?
S. So value for money can remain elusive while taxpayer bears the financial burden?
T. So public assets can continue to decay at taxpayer cost?
U. So palliatives targeted at the poor can continue to be hoarded, looted and traded for political gain?
V. So estacodes continue to flow unabated depleting public funds?
W. So social safety nets can remain weak when they could be funded by our taxes?
X. So citizens can continue to self-provide basic services including power, potable water, security, education, healthcare while taxes are abused?
Y. So trust between the poor and the state can continue to erode driven by abuse of commonwealth?
Z. So the poor can be asked to pay more and receive almost nothing in return for their own commonwealth?
Stop for one second. Ask yourself one simple question:
If government has been collecting money since, and your life did not improve, why will this one be different?
If food is already expensive, if transport is already costly, if school fees are already heavy, why take more money from poor people? This tax will not fix Nigeria. Rather, this tax will push the poor deeper into suffering. This is the truth without the sugarcoat.
Nigeria now stands at crossroads.
Road One:
Poor people keep paying more.
Hunger increases.
Suffering grows.
Nigeria becomes weaker.
Road Two:
We stop this tax.
The poor breathe.
Families survive.
Nigeria has a chance.
Only one road helps you.
If you choose to Stop This Tax, then from tomorrow 6th of January 2026, visit our website: StopThisTax.org
We are not asking you to protest.
We are not asking you for money or for anything else.
We only want you to understand.
When you understand, you will know what to do.
Tomorrow, go to StopThisTax.org
Learn quietly.
Protect yourself lawfully.
If this brings clarity to you, feel free to share it with other Nigerians who may be affected.
Yours in Service, Emmanuel Orjih
Email: emmanuel@StopThisTax.org. www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuel-orjih
