The Country Director of DigiTax Nigeria, Olumide Akinsola, speaks on the significance of Nigeria’s e-invoicing regime, the risks facing non-compliant companies, and the broader implications for tax administration and revenue generation, in this interview with JUSTICE OKAMGBA
Nigeria’s e-invoicing enforcement begins on July 1, 2026. How significant is this development for the country’s tax system?
It is one of the most consequential shifts in Nigeria’s fiscal architecture in decades. Nigeria’s tax-to-GDP ratio sits at approximately 8.2 per cent, against a continental average of about 16 per cent. The government is targeting 18 per cent, and e-invoicing is central to achieving that goal. What makes this different from previous reform efforts is the mechanism. The Nigeria Revenue Service is deploying a Continuous Transaction Controls model where every invoice must be validated by the tax authority before it reaches the buyer. That provides real-time visibility into the economy, transaction by transaction.
Nigeria formalised this internationally in September 2025 when it was registered as a PEPPOL authority, adopting the same e-invoicing standards used by the UAE, Singapore and Australia, among others.
Reports indicate that thousands of large businesses are yet to comply. How concerned should stakeholders be?
They should be very concerned. The NRS estimates that approximately 5,000 companies fall within the large taxpayer category, with roughly 1,000 having completed integration as of early 2026. The financial consequence is immediate. Any invoice carrying a VAT charge that is not transmitted through the NRS system after July 1 automatically triggers a penalty.
Under the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, businesses face an administrative fine of N200,000 per infraction, a 100 per cent surcharge on the tax due on that invoice, and interest accruing at two percentage points above the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy Rate. For a company processing thousands of invoices monthly, those numbers compound very quickly.
Why are many companies struggling to meet the deadline?
The most common barrier is a gap between awareness and readiness. Most large businesses know about the mandate, but many are still running legacy processes where invoices are generated as PDFs, emailed between departments and reconciled manually at month-end. The NRS system requires structured XML data, validated in real time and routed through an accredited provider. That is a fundamental change to the transaction workflow, requiring systems integration, process redesign and staff training.
For companies running complex ERP environments, the integration timeline alone can take several weeks. Businesses that started early are now live and reporting smoother VAT filings. Those who waited are trying to compress a structured implementation into a matter of days.
Do you believe businesses have taken the directive seriously enough?
Broadly, no. However, awareness and adoption are increasing rapidly. Many businesses understand the regulatory requirement without fully internalising the commercial consequences of non-compliance. There is a pattern we have seen. A Chief Financial Officer or Head of Tax acknowledges the mandate and assumes the IT team has it under control, only to discover the gap when the company attempts to claim VAT input credits on invoices that were never transmitted.
Businesses that took the directive seriously from the outset treated it as a finance and operations priority, assigned cross-functional ownership and began integration months ago. They are now operating with cleaner records and faster VAT processing.
What happens to companies that fail to comply after July 1?
The consequences are codified in the Nigeria Tax Administration Act and the Nigeria Tax Act, both of which have been in full legal force since January 1, 2026. Every taxable invoice not processed through the NRS platform attracts an administrative penalty of N200,000, a full VAT surcharge and interest at the CBN Monetary Policy Rate plus two per cent.
There is also a supply-chain dimension that many businesses have overlooked. If your invoices are not validated, your buyers cannot claim VAT input credits on those purchases. Your non-compliance becomes your customer’s financial problem. In competitive markets, that is a very fast way to lose accounts.
Some businesses complain about the cost of compliance. Are those concerns justified?
Implementation does require investment. Businesses need to assess their systems, engage accredited providers and train their teams. Those are real costs. Where the conversation needs to shift is to the comparison. A single non-compliant invoice carrying a N200,000 penalty, a 100 per cent tax surcharge and compounding interest will, in most cases, exceed the entire cost of onboarding onto a compliant platform.
DigiTax provides a free sandbox environment for testing integrations before going live, while our web portal offers an accessible entry point for companies still building out their ERP capabilities. The cost of compliance is measurable. The cost of non-compliance is open-ended.
Given the economic challenges facing businesses, could e-invoicing become an additional burden?
I understand why that concern surfaces, especially when operating costs are rising across the board. What the data shows, however, is that businesses already on compliant platforms are reporting tangible benefits, including faster VAT filings, reduced audit friction, cleaner records and improved cash-flow visibility.
The businesses carrying the heaviest burden today are those processing invoices manually and absorbing the time and cost associated with audit disputes. E-invoicing compresses that entire cycle. Over a 12-month horizon, most businesses find that the efficiency gains more than offset the setup cost.
How does e-invoicing improve tax compliance?
Traditional invoicing is fundamentally reactive. A business issues an invoice, files a return weeks later, and the tax authority only discovers discrepancies during an audit, sometimes years after the fact. The NRS framework replaces that model with Continuous Transaction Controls. Every invoice is validated and transmitted in real time before it reaches the buyer.
The NRS can see who is buying from whom, at what volumes and at what tax values as the economy moves. That makes under-reporting and VAT under-declaration structurally difficult because the data trail is continuous and independently verified.
Will it significantly boost government revenue?
The impact should be substantial. A significant portion of taxable commercial activity in Nigeria currently goes unrecorded or under-reported. E-invoicing makes that invisible economy visible, transaction by transaction, without the need for an army of auditors. Countries that have deployed similar CTC models, including Italy, saw compliance rates accelerate sharply once enforcement began.
Nigeria’s phased rollout follows the same logic: start where revenue concentration and institutional capacity are highest, then extend progressively. The government’s target of an 18 per cent tax-to-GDP ratio requires closing the gap between what is owed and what is collected, and e-invoicing is a primary instrument for achieving that.
Nigeria still grapples with power and internet challenges. Could these affect implementation?
Infrastructure is a genuine consideration. The NRS and its accredited providers, including DigiTax, have designed the system to account for the Nigerian operating environment. The platform supports asynchronous transmission, meaning invoices can be queued and transmitted when connectivity is restored without breaking the compliance chain.
Cloud-based solutions reduce dependence on local hardware, while mobile-enabled access points extend coverage beyond major urban centres. The technical architecture has been built with these constraints in mind, and businesses in our network across Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia are operating successfully in similar environments.
What are the major concerns businesses have raised with DigiTax?
The three most common concerns are integration complexity, timeline and cost. Large enterprises running SAP or Oracle systems want to know how long API integration takes and whether it will disrupt existing workflows. A well-scoped integration typically takes a few weeks, and we run it in parallel with existing systems during testing to avoid operational disruption.
Medium-sized businesses often ask whether they need a full ERP overhaul. They do not. Our web portal allows them to start issuing compliant invoices while they work towards deeper integration. Across all segments, there is a persistent question about post-go-live support. Our approach includes dedicated onboarding and ongoing monitoring to ensure businesses remain compliant once they are live.
How secure are e-invoicing platforms?
Security is foundational. Every validated invoice carries an Invoice Reference Number and a Cryptographic Stamp Identifier, which acts as a digital signature confirming the invoice’s authenticity and integrity.
Any tampering breaks the cryptographic seal and becomes immediately detectable. At DigiTax, we use cryptographically signed JSON Web Tokens for API authentication and comply with industry-standard data protection protocols. The structured nature of the system makes e-invoicing considerably more secure than traditional paper or PDF invoicing, where documents can be altered or fabricated with minimal traceability.
Are you witnessing a last-minute rush by companies seeking compliance support?
Absolutely. Inbound enquiries have increased significantly in recent weeks. This is a pattern we have seen in every market where e-invoicing enforcement has been introduced: measured engagement followed by sharp acceleration as the deadline becomes imminent.
In Nigeria, the acceleration has been particularly pronounced because many businesses assumed the enforcement timeline would be extended. The NRS has been clear that July 1 remains the effective date. We are onboarding businesses as quickly as possible, but companies coming in now are working with compressed timelines that could have been avoided through earlier engagement.
Should the government consider extending the deadline?
The NRS has structured this rollout thoughtfully through phased timelines, stakeholder engagement, pilot testing and post-go-live reviews. Large taxpayers have had more than a year to prepare. Extending the deadline would undermine the credibility of the enforcement framework and signal that compliance timelines are negotiable, which would be corrosive to institutional trust.
The phased approach already provides a built-in adjustment mechanism. Medium taxpayers go live in July 2026, with enforcement beginning in January 2027, while emerging taxpayers follow in 2027. What businesses need now is accelerated integration support, and accredited providers such as DigiTax have a responsibility to deliver that.
Looking beyond compliance, what benefits can businesses derive from e-invoicing?
Businesses on our platform consistently report faster VAT filings, simpler audit preparation and improved cash-flow forecasting because invoicing data is captured in real time rather than reconstructed at month-end. There is also a commercial positioning benefit.
As enforcement widens, buyers will increasingly need to verify that their suppliers’ invoices are NRS-validated because unvalidated invoices prevent buyers from claiming VAT input credits. Businesses that can demonstrate verified compliance become more attractive to large institutional buyers and public-sector procurement opportunities. Compliance becomes a competitive differentiator, and early adopters are already realising that advantage.
Can e-invoicing help tackle tax evasion in Nigeria?
That is one of its primary design objectives. Tax evasion thrives where transactions remain invisible to the revenue authority. Under the traditional system, a business could issue an invoice for one amount and report a different amount on its tax return, with the discrepancy surfacing only during a manual audit, if it surfaced at all.
The CTC model eliminates that gap. Every invoice is validated and recorded by the NRS in real time. Africa loses an estimated N20tn annually to tax gaps and revenue leakages. E-invoicing addresses the structural cause by making commercial activity visible at the point of transaction rather than relying on self-reporting after the fact.
Five years from now, what impact do you expect e-invoicing to have on Nigeria’s economy?
I expect e-invoicing to become a foundational pillar of Nigeria’s fiscal infrastructure by 2031. The immediate impact will be measurable increases in VAT collection and a narrowing of the compliance gap. The deeper impact will be reflected in the quality of economic data available to policymakers.
When the NRS can see who is buying from whom, across sectors and at what volumes, that information becomes invaluable for economic planning and financial inclusion. We have already seen this in Kenya, where the KRA’s eTIMS system has produced richer transaction-level data than previous frameworks.
Nigeria’s economy is substantially larger, and the data infrastructure created by e-invoicing will give both government and the private sector a more accurate picture of where economic value is being generated.
What is your message to chief executives and finance directors who are yet to comply?
Every day of non-compliance after July 1 is a day your invoices are generating penalties, and your buyers are losing the ability to claim VAT input credits on your transactions. This is a financial exposure that compounds with every invoice issued.
The compliance process through an accredited provider such as DigiTax can begin immediately. Assess your current invoicing workflow and engage with us at digitax tech to begin the integration process. We have onboarding pathways for businesses at every stage of digital readiness, from full API integration to our web portal for companies that need to begin issuing compliant invoices immediately.
Give a brief summary of Namiri Technology, DigiTax and your services.
Namiri Technology Limited is a pan-African tax technology company. We built DigiTax, an e-invoicing and tax compliance platform that sits between a business’s existing invoicing or ERP system and the national tax authority.
We are accredited by the Nigeria Revenue Service as both an Access Point Provider and a System Integrator under the Merchant Buyer Solution framework. That means we handle the full compliance chain: generating structured invoices, validating them against NRS requirements, transmitting them in real time, and returning the validated invoice with its Invoice Reference Number and Cryptographic Stamp back to the business.
We operate across Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and the UAE, supporting more than 1,000 businesses that have collectively processed more than $15bn in invoices. In Nigeria, large enterprises can integrate directly through our API, while businesses still building out their digital infrastructure can use the DigiTax web portal to begin issuing compliant invoices immediately.
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