Governments want dependable methods to know what’s produced, what enters the nation, what’s bought and what tax is owed.
In sectors the place excise duties apply, efficient monitoring will help cut back income leakage, establish counterfeit merchandise and defend legit companies from opponents working exterior the legislation.
The problem is to construct a system that achieves these targets with out creating pointless duplication, slowing manufacturing or shifting extreme prices onto compliant corporations.
Nigeria’s new excise stamp regime presents a chance to look at how know-how ought to be deployed in public administration.
The Nigeria Customs Service Excise Stamp Regulations, 2026, set up a framework for bodily or digital authentication marks and the monitoring of excisable merchandise. The laws’ said goals embody traceability, accountability, product authenticity, digital monitoring and curbing illicit commerce.
Those goals are sound. But the selection of know-how and the approach it’s built-in into current methods are essential. A system may be technologically refined but operationally inefficient.
It can gather extra knowledge with out essentially bettering enforcement. It also can create extra prices for companies whereas leaving the underlying downside—weak coordination, poor intelligence or ineffective inspections—unresolved.
This is why the debate shouldn’t be lowered as to whether tax stamps are helpful in precept. The actual query is whether or not Nigeria’s specific hybrid mannequin is the handiest and economical technique of attaining its goals.
MAN has argued that the Customs Service’s B’Odogwu Automated Excise Register System and the Federal Inland Revenue Service’s e-invoicing platform already present necessary digital information of excise operations, manufacturing and gross sales. The affiliation’s objection is that one other compliance layer might duplicate capabilities that authorities has already invested in growing.
The existence of those platforms doesn’t, by itself, show that they’ll carry out each operate of a product-level authentication system. E-invoicing, for instance, serves a unique instant goal from verifying a person product in a store or alongside a distribution route.
Likewise, an excise register could present helpful manufacturing knowledge with out essentially giving shoppers or enforcement officers a straightforward technique of checking the authenticity of a particular merchandise.
That distinction is necessary. It could be untimely to conclude that the stamp regime is technically redundant with out evaluating the precise capabilities of the methods. But it’s equally untimely for the authorities to imagine {that a} new bodily and digital layer is critical with out demonstrating which current capabilities are insufficient.
The authorities ought to start with a methods audit. What knowledge does B’Odogwu already seize? What data is offered by e-invoicing? Can manufacturing volumes, excise obligations and product actions be reconciled throughout the platforms? Where are the gaps in real-time monitoring? How incessantly do these gaps lead to misplaced income or the circulation of illicit items? And what wouldn’t it price to shut them by integration fairly than one other standalone association?
These should not merely technical questions. They decide whether or not the authorities is spending public assets and imposing private-sector prices effectively.
A well-designed digital system ought to cut back duplication, automate routine reporting, enhance the high quality of knowledge and assist enforcement businesses give attention to high-risk transactions. Where a number of businesses gather related knowledge however can’t alternate it successfully, the downside could also be institutional interoperability fairly than the absence of one other platform.
Creating a further system with out fixing that downside might depart companies getting into related data repeatedly whereas businesses proceed to function separate databases. That could be a failure of digital governance, not a triumph of modernisation.
The bodily element raises additional questions. A bodily mark could present a visual authentication characteristic, however it may also be falsified, eliminated, copied or improperly reused if safety and verification procedures are insufficient.
Digital identifiers should not proof against manipulation both: poorly secured databases, cloned codes, compromised units and weak entry controls can undermine a digital-only answer. No know-how is mechanically efficient just because it’s bodily or digital.
The appropriate response is to not assume that each one bodily stamps are out of date, nor that each digital different is superior. It is to match out there fashions towards measurable standards: authentication accuracy, resistance to fraud, ease of verification, implementation price, production-line velocity, knowledge safety, interoperability and the potential to detect illicit provide chains.
A hybrid system could also be justified in circumstances the place a bodily safety characteristic gives a demonstrable benefit. But the place a digital identifier linked to a safe, interoperable database can ship the identical end result at decrease price, requiring a bodily stamp could quantity to pointless friction.
The authorities must also be cautious about adopting claims from worldwide expertise with out analyzing the context.
MAN has cited issues about the prices and operational penalties of stamp methods, together with the danger that paper-based marks may be falsified.
Such claims warrant unbiased analysis. Their relevance to Nigeria will depend on the design of the proposed system, the traits of the affected industries and the energy of enforcement establishments.
Before imposing a compulsory system throughout the related product classes, the authorities ought to publish a technical and financial evaluation that compares the proposed mannequin with possible options. It ought to embody a transparent baseline towards which efficiency may be measured, together with present income leakage, detected counterfeit merchandise, compliance prices and the capability of current methods.
A pilot programme with unbiased analysis might assist set up whether or not the system improves compliance and authentication in apply. The outcomes ought to be made public, and the authorities ought to be ready to change the design if the proof reveals that the system is simply too pricey or fails to ship the anticipated advantages.
The challenge of information possession and entry must even be addressed. Manufacturers ought to know what data they’re required to submit, how it is going to be protected, which businesses can entry it and the way errors may be corrected. A reputable system wants safeguards towards misuse, pointless disclosure and operational disruption.
Nigeria’s digital transformation ought to make compliance simpler, not multiply administrative obstacles. Technology ought to assist authorities gather income with larger precision and decrease price, whereas permitting legit companies to give attention to producing and distributing items.
A contemporary tax administration will not be one which deploys the best variety of platforms, however one which makes its methods work collectively. The authorities mustn’t deal with one other stamp as proof of progress. It ought to show that the new regime performs a needed operate that current infrastructure can’t adequately ship.
If that proof is absent, the hybrid system ought to be redesigned round integration, digital verification and focused enforcement. Nigeria doesn’t want know-how for its personal sake. It wants know-how that closes actual gaps, protects shoppers, strengthens public income and reduces the price of compliance. Anything much less dangers turning digital modernisation into one other costly administrative layer.
Ultimately, the Federal Government must reject the hybrid excise stamp policy in its current type and cease imposing extra compliance burdens on legit producers with out first proving that the system delivers advantages current infrastructure can’t present.
Nigeria can’t credibly pursue tax reform, industrial growth, job creation and financial competitiveness whereas permitting regulatory duplication to extend manufacturing prices, complicate manufacturing facility operations and probably push costs increased for shoppers.
The Nigeria Customs Service must show, with verifiable proof, why the current B’Odogwu Automated Excise Register System and FIRS e-invoicing can’t be strengthened and built-in to attain the identical goals extra effectively.
Until that case is convincingly established, the policy ought to be suspended and subjected to an unbiased technical, authorized and financial evaluation. Nigeria wants smarter tax enforcement, not one other layer of paperwork; stronger digital integration, not pricey duplication; and a manufacturing-friendly tax system, not a regime that penalises companies for working inside the legislation.
The authorities must pursue illicit merchants and tax evaders with willpower, however it must not make compliant producers and peculiar Nigerians pay the value for an inadequately justified policy.
Kunle Adebisi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
