Governments want dependable methods to know what’s produced, what enters the nation, what’s offered and what tax is owed.
In sectors the place excise duties apply, efficient monitoring may also help cut back income leakage, determine counterfeit merchandise and defend authentic companies from rivals working exterior the legislation.
The problem is to construct a system that achieves these objectives with out creating pointless duplication, slowing manufacturing or shifting extreme prices onto compliant corporations.
Nigeria’s new excise stamp regime presents a possibility 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’ acknowledged goals embody traceability, accountability, product authenticity, digital monitoring and curbing illicit commerce.
Those goals are sound. But the selection of know-how and the method it’s built-in into present programs are essential. A system will be technologically refined but operationally inefficient.
It can accumulate extra knowledge with out essentially bettering enforcement. It may also create further prices for companies whereas leaving the underlying downside—weak coordination, poor intelligence or ineffective inspections—unresolved.
This is why the debate shouldn’t be decreased as to whether tax stamps are helpful in precept. The actual query is whether or not Nigeria’s explicit hybrid mannequin is the only 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 vital digital information of excise operations, manufacturing and gross sales. The affiliation’s objection is that one other compliance layer might duplicate features that authorities has already invested in growing.
The existence of those platforms doesn’t, by itself, show that they will carry out each perform of a product-level authentication system. E-invoicing, for instance, serves a unique quick objective 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 customers or enforcement officers a simple technique of checking the authenticity of a selected merchandise.
That distinction is vital. It can be untimely to conclude that the stamp regime is technically redundant with out evaluating the precise capabilities of the programs. But it’s equally untimely for the authorities to imagine {that a} new bodily and digital layer is important with out demonstrating which present features are insufficient.
The authorities ought to start with a programs audit. What knowledge does B’Odogwu already seize? What info is obtainable by means of e-invoicing? Can manufacturing volumes, excise obligations and product actions be reconciled throughout the platforms? Where are the gaps in real-time monitoring? How ceaselessly do these gaps lead to misplaced income or the circulation of illicit items? And what would it not price to shut them by means of integration somewhat than one other standalone association?
These are usually not merely technical questions. They decide whether or not the authorities is spending public sources 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 companies concentrate on high-risk transactions. Where a number of companies accumulate related knowledge however can’t trade it successfully, the downside could also be institutional interoperability somewhat than the absence of one other platform.
Creating an extra system with out fixing that downside might go away companies coming into related info repeatedly whereas companies proceed to function separate databases. That can be a failure of digital governance, not a triumph of modernisation.
The bodily part raises additional questions. A bodily mark could present a visual authentication function, however it may also be falsified, eliminated, copied or improperly reused if safety and verification procedures are insufficient.
Digital identifiers are usually not proof against manipulation both: poorly secured databases, cloned codes, compromised gadgets and weak entry controls can undermine a digital-only answer. No know-how is mechanically efficient just because it’s bodily or digital.
The right response is to not assume that every one bodily stamps are out of date, nor that each digital different is superior. It is to match out there fashions in opposition to measurable standards: authentication accuracy, resistance to fraud, ease of verification, implementation price, production-line velocity, knowledge safety, interoperability and the capacity to detect illicit provide chains.
A hybrid system could also be justified in circumstances the place a bodily safety function gives a demonstrable benefit. But the place a digital identifier linked to a safe, interoperable database can ship the identical outcome at decrease price, requiring a bodily stamp could quantity to pointless friction.
The authorities also needs to be cautious about adopting claims from worldwide expertise with out inspecting the context.
MAN has cited considerations about the prices and operational penalties of stamp programs, together with the threat that paper-based marks will be falsified.
Such claims warrant impartial analysis. Their relevance to Nigeria relies on the design of the proposed system, the traits of the affected industries and the power 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 alternate options. It ought to embody a transparent baseline in opposition to which efficiency will be measured, together with present income leakage, detected counterfeit merchandise, compliance prices and the capability of present programs.
A pilot programme with impartial analysis might assist set up whether or not the system improves compliance and authentication in observe. The outcomes ought to be made public, and the authorities ought to be ready to switch the design if the proof reveals that the system is simply too pricey or fails to ship the anticipated advantages.
The situation of knowledge possession and entry must even be addressed. Manufacturers ought to know what info they’re required to submit, how it will likely be protected, which companies can entry it and the way errors will be corrected. A reputable system wants safeguards in opposition to misuse, pointless disclosure and operational disruption.
Nigeria’s digital transformation ought to make compliance simpler, not multiply administrative obstacles. Technology ought to assist authorities accumulate income with higher precision and decrease price, whereas permitting authentic companies to concentrate on producing and distributing items.
A contemporary tax administration is just not one which deploys the best variety of platforms, however one which makes its programs work collectively. The authorities mustn’t deal with one other stamp as proof of progress. It ought to reveal that the new regime performs a crucial perform that present 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 customers, 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 kind and cease imposing further compliance burdens on authentic producers with out first proving that the system delivers advantages present 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 doubtlessly push costs increased for customers.
The Nigeria Customs Service must reveal, with verifiable proof, why the present B’Odogwu Automated Excise Register System and FIRS e-invoicing can’t be strengthened and built-in to realize the identical goals extra effectively.
Until that case is convincingly established, the policy ought to be suspended and subjected to an impartial technical, authorized and financial overview. 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 bizarre Nigerians pay the worth for an inadequately justified policy.
Kunle Adebisi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
