By Lawan Musa (Baba Lawan)
September 2025
The recent push to introduce fresh electronic transfer taxes in Nigeria is a dangerous misstep that risks punishing the poor, discouraging digital adoption, and further eroding public trust in government. Policymakers appear blind to the lessons playing out right across our western border, where Ghana has already lived through—and wisely abandoned—this costly experiment.
A tax on poverty, not prosperity
The idea of taxing everyday electronic transactions sounds simple on paper: broaden the tax base, raise revenue, and ease fiscal pressure. But in practice, it is the petty trader in Kano, the okada rider in Ibadan, and the market woman in Aba who feel the sting. These are the citizens who rely on frequent small transfers to survive. Charging them extra for sending ₦1,500 to a supplier or receiving ₦3,000 from a customer is not economic reform—it is daylight extortion.
This levy is regressive. The rich who move millions of naira in a single transaction will barely notice, but the poor who make ten small transfers a week will pay disproportionately more. Instead of lifting people into the formal financial system, government is nudging them back into the shadows of cash.
Digital backwardness in the name of revenue
Nigeria has spent years promoting cashless policies and financial inclusion. The Central Bank preaches the gospel of digital payments as the future of commerce. Yet the proposed tax pulls in the opposite direction. Every time government slaps charges on mobile banking, fintech wallets, or POS machines, citizens retreat to cash.
It is a cruel irony: in the name of boosting revenue, we shrink the very digital economy that could, in the long run, grow the revenue base sustainably.
Political suicide in a season of hardship
At a time when inflation is chewing through household income and unemployment remains stubbornly high, the political class should know better than to target the very platform ordinary Nigerians depend on for daily survival. Punching down on the poor is not reform; it is provocation. And once again, Abuja risks losing the moral right to preach sacrifice when citizens see wastage, corruption, and luxury still flourishing at the top.
Ghana’s lesson: a U-turn that saved credibility
Ghanaians faced this same misadventure in 2022 when their government imposed the infamous e-levy. The public backlash was immediate and ferocious. Transaction volumes fell, digital inclusion suffered, and revenue collections disappointed. When President John Dramani Mahama returned to power this year, he wasted no time in repealing the e-levy on April 2, 2025. His message was clear: a government that claims to serve the people cannot build its budget on their pain.
That bold decision has already restored public confidence and signaled to investors that Ghana is serious about sustainable reforms, not quick fixes at the expense of citizens.
Nigeria must not stumble into the same trap
If Nigeria truly seeks fiscal stability, the solutions are not hidden: block leakages, expand VAT efficiency, reform customs, plug oil theft, and tax luxury consumption—not the ₦2,000 transfer of a struggling market woman.
History is already giving us a live tutorial from Accra. The question is whether Abuja is listening—or whether it will stubbornly repeat Ghana’s mistake only to one day bow, humiliated, to the same popular social discontent.
Final word: A tax that drives citizens back to cash, strangles the digital economy, and enrages the poor is not reform. It is self-sabotage. Nigeria should look across to Ghana, learn the lesson, and quietly shelve this anti-people levy before it burns what little trust remains between government and governed.
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Opinion