A shady, unscrupulous, menacing and disreputable foreign enclave, which other sensible and right-thinking nations that Nigeria shares borders with, is giving the marching orders, is the one we just welcomed into our home and gave the key to the safe where the valuables and cherished worldly possessions of the family members are kept.
On Thursday, the Nigerian government, through the Federal Inland Revenue Service, announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with France to ‘strengthen bilateral cooperation and advance the digital transformation’. The statement announcing the signing of the MoU is replete with the usual clean and well-worded prose and the colour adjectives that characterise government press releases in this part of the globe. However, underneath the crisp and clean language, the true intent and purpose of the MoU was buried.
At first glance and with a cursory look, the statement seems innocuous and positive, but a closer look at the fine print reveals some morbidly unsettling details. While the language deployed by FIRS presented the MoU as something mutually beneficial and progressive for Nigeria, an intense scrutiny of the statement exposed the deal to be nothing more than a vicious and ruthless plan to turn Nigeria into France’s vassal state and give the Western European nation unfettered access to Nigeria’s sensitive raw data.
France is not known to play fairly or act within the realm of reason, respect, honour and common sense when dealing with African nations. And the evidence of this can be seen in how it treats its former colonies in West Africa, many of whom are still beholden to it and have been unable to carve their own paths and build a nation that truly works for their people. France is a rapacious and aggressive economic predator that viciously and ruthlessly feeds off its colonies and any other African nation that is stupid enough to forge an alliance with it.
Any discerning mind and an averagely smart person can see through the deceptive framing and wording of the MoU the FIRS signed with France’s DGFiP, which it claims is to “modernise tax administration”, “data-driven enforcement”, “information exchange”, and “capacity building”. It is easy to see through the destructive shenanigans of the Nigerian government and this attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the citizenry through the use of some fancy and tired phrases is utterly disgraceful and an insult to the sensibilities of Nigerians.
It is even more jarring and disconcerting is the fact that the Nigerian government, without any coercion and arm-twisting, decided to hand over the nation’s tax system and framework to France, a contemptible foreign entity that other West African nations it colonised are trying to break free from and kicking it out because it undermines their sovereignty and stalls their growth. France is a parasitic entity and its sole purpose is to devour any West African country that partners with it to the bone. It has a chokehold on the CFA zone and controls the currency reserves from N’Djamena to Port Novo and keeps tabs on cash flow and financial transactions from Dakar to Lomé. They also influence and shape the customs of these countries.
It is this country that we’ve willingly embraced as a reliable partner, and we have now graciously handed over our tax architecture and fiscal autonomy to it. A shady and unscrupulous foreign enclave, which other sensible and right-thinking nations that Nigeria shares borders with, is giving the marching orders, is the one we just welcomed into our home and gave the key to the safe where the valuables and cherished worldly possessions of the family members are kept. The French did not have to go through any trouble to make us a vassal state. We’re not beholden to them in any shape or form to the point that we will accept being party to such a ludicrous deal that hands over our economic sovereignty to them.
The consequences of this MoU are frightening and far-reaching for Nigerians. Once France has unhindered access to our revenue backend, they have every piece of information about your economy at their fingertips. They know pays and evade tax, they know the inward and outward financial flow, which industry is not profitable and which one is lucrative and worth investing in. They have an eagle-eye view of your economic dynamics and structure and can use all this information to their advantage. This is not “information exchange”, it is economic subjugation. It is not “capacity building”, it is contemporary colonialism.
One is further consumed by despair and a deep sense of foreboding when one realises that this deal is not a result of Nigeria’s lack of capacity to manage its own tax system. We have reliable, competent and advanced local companies with the knowledge, sophistication, technical know-how and world-class digital ecosystem to handle the task. The recently launched PAPSS (Pan African Payment software) is headed by a Nigerian, the former CTO of Flutterwave. We have Flutterwave, Paystack, Interswitch, Bamboo, PiggyVest, Remitta, and NIBSS; we sidelined all these formidable and strong digital payment and financial technology platforms at home and went to France to submit our sovereign data to them. Instead of building and strengthening our local capacity, we chose to surrender our most fiscal kit to a foreign power that survives by controlling African nations’ economies through exploitation and plundering.
The shackles of imperialism and chains of colonialism that Francophone countries are fighting hard to escape from are what Nigeria has just walked into gleefully and joyfully. As Nigeria transitions from FIRS to Nigeria Revenue Service in 2026 the French will have their hand right on the pulse of our entire economic and fiscal architecture. Their fingerprints will be found on the tax backend, algorithms, enforcement model, data pool, and compliance performance. This leaves Nigeria vulnerable to economic warfare and its citizens exposed to external manipulation. No foreign nation that takes its sovereignty and self-preservation seriously will give a foreign nation unrestricted access to what should be its most protected fiscal and economic ecosystem. But here we are signing away our economic sovereignty and auctioning our resources and people because of greed and power of leaders with no self-worth and sense of purpose.
This MoU is a breach of national security, and anyone who thinks it’s fine for a nation to hand over its revenue system and crucial economic data to a foreign government needs to be tied to a stake and shot.
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