By Lawan Musa Danlami (Baba Lawan)
December 2025
The recent intervention by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) against the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and France’s Direction Générale des Finances Publiques should not be read as a momentary political outburst or regional apprehension. Rather, it is best understood as part of a much longer historical struggle over economic control, sovereignty, and foreign influence in the Nigerian space. When placed within the broader sweep of imperial history and political economy, the elders’ warning reveals a striking continuity between nineteenth-century European imperial rivalry and twenty-first-century forms of neo-colonial power exercised through data, institutions, and technical agreements.
In the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Scramble for Africa, France aggressively pursued expansion across West and Central Africa with the ambition of constructing a contiguous empire stretching from Senegal to the Red Sea. Central to this project was access to the Niger Basin, not merely for territorial reasons but for the control of trade routes, customs revenues, and commercial intelligence. French explorers, trading firms, missionaries, and diplomats competed fiercely with their British counterparts to secure treaties with local rulers along the Niger and Benue rivers. These treaties were not symbolic; they were instruments designed to establish monopolies over commerce and fiscal access, which historians such as A. G. Hopkins have identified as the true foundations of imperial power.
The territories that later became Nigeria were therefore a central prize in Franco-British rivalry. France’s ambitions extended deep into the Central Sudan, including the historic Borno Empire, whose strategic location in trans-Saharan and trans-Sudanic trade networks made it a critical node of economic power. French expeditions advanced toward the Lake Chad region, and for a period, parts of Borno fell under French military occupation or influence. This advance was not accidental; it formed part of France’s deliberate attempt to encircle British commercial interests and redirect trade flows toward French-controlled routes.
Yet these ambitions ultimately collided with Britain’s own imperial strategy. Through a combination of diplomatic pressure, commercial monopolisation, and political manoeuvring, Britain resisted French encroachment. The figure of Sir George Goldie looms large in this history. By consolidating British trading interests under what became the Royal Niger Company, Goldie waged what historians have described as a “commercial war” against French firms. Control of trade translated into control of customs revenues, and control of customs revenues translated into political authority. By the time imperial claims were formally discussed in Europe, Britain had already secured decisive economic dominance on the ground.
The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 merely formalised these realities. Contrary to popular myth, the conference did not arbitrarily divide Africa; it ratified outcomes already produced by competition, coercion, and commercial success. In this process, French claims to much of the Niger area, including territories historically linked to Borno, were rolled back or redirected elsewhere. What France attempted to seize through treaties and force was effectively taken from it and recognised as falling within Britain’s sphere of influence. Nigeria thus emerged not simply as a British colony, but as a space actively denied to France through intense imperial contestation.
This historical episode is crucial to understanding the NEF’s present concern. Scholars of empire have long argued that colonialism was less about flags and frontiers than about control over revenue systems and economic intelligence. Customs houses, ports, and trading posts were the databases of the nineteenth century. They generated information about production, consumption, and wealth that allowed imperial powers to govern, tax, and dominate. In the contemporary world, tax data plays precisely this role. Access to taxpayer information reveals patterns of wealth, corporate structures, investment flows, and economic vulnerabilities. In strategic terms, it offers a map of a nation’s economic bloodstream.
Modern political economy provides the theoretical language to explain why this matters. Susan Strange’s concept of structural power shows how states can shape outcomes by controlling financial and informational systems rather than by exercising overt political rule. Shoshana Zuboff’s analysis of surveillance capitalism demonstrates how data extraction becomes a central mechanism of power in modern societies. Building on this, scholars such as Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias describe “data colonialism” as a process through which value and strategic advantage are extracted through digital infrastructures rather than physical occupation.
Seen through this lens, the NEF’s warning about the FIRS–France MoU is not alarmist. It reflects an understanding that what France failed to secure in the nineteenth century through imperial rivalry must not be conceded in the twenty-first century through technical cooperation. The concern is not simply about training or capacity building, but about access, asymmetry, and long-term dependency. Tax data, once shared, cannot be reclaimed. It shapes policy choices, bargaining power, and geopolitical leverage.
This anxiety is further reinforced by France’s historical record in Africa. Across much of Francophone Africa, French influence has been exercised not only through politics but through fiscal, monetary, and administrative systems that have constrained sovereignty long after independence. Kwame Nkrumah famously warned that neo-colonialism would operate through agreements, experts, and institutions rather than soldiers. His insight remains relevant. The instruments have changed, but the logic endures.
To be clear, international cooperation in taxation is not inherently harmful. Economists such as Joseph Stiglitz have argued that cross-border collaboration is necessary to combat tax evasion, illicit financial flows, and profit shifting by multinational corporations. However, cooperation becomes problematic when it lacks reciprocity, transparency, robust legal safeguards, and democratic oversight. The NEF’s critique is therefore not a rejection of global engagement, but a demand that such engagement be governed by clear data-sovereignty laws, parliamentary scrutiny, and national strategic interest.
Ultimately, the elders’ intervention should be read as historically informed vigilance. Nigeria’s independence was not won only in 1960; it was shaped by economic struggles dating back to the nineteenth century. If colonialism once advanced through trade monopolies and customs revenues, neo-colonialism now advances through databases, algorithms, and fiscal architectures. History teaches that sovereignty is not preserved by symbols alone, but by control over the institutions that generate and manage economic power.
In this sense, the NEF’s warning is both patriotic and intellectually defensible. It challenges Nigeria to ensure that modernization does not become capitulation, and that what was once resisted through hard-fought economic contestation is not surrendered freely in digital form.
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