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 might help scale back income leakage, determine counterfeit merchandise and shield respectable companies from opponents 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 firms.
Nigeria’s new excise stamp regime presents a chance to look at how know-how must 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 rules’ said goals embody traceability, accountability, product authenticity, digital monitoring and curbing illicit commerce.
Those goals are sound. But the alternative of know-how and the method it’s built-in into current techniques are essential. A system will be technologically subtle but operationally inefficient.
It can gather extra knowledge with out essentially bettering enforcement. It can even 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 lowered 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 reaching 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 essential digital data of excise operations, manufacturing and gross sales. The affiliation’s objection is that one other compliance layer may duplicate features 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 rapid goal from verifying a person product in a store or alongside a distribution route.
Likewise, an excise register might present helpful manufacturing knowledge with out essentially giving shoppers or enforcement officers a straightforward technique of checking the authenticity of a selected merchandise.
That distinction is essential. It can be untimely to conclude that the stamp regime is technically redundant with out evaluating the precise capabilities of the techniques. But it’s equally untimely for the authorities to imagine {that a} new bodily and digital layer is important with out demonstrating which current features are insufficient.
The authorities ought to start with a techniques audit. What knowledge does B’Odogwu already seize? What info is accessible by way 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 regularly do these gaps lead to misplaced income or the circulation of illicit items? And what would it not price to shut them by way 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 scale 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 comparable knowledge however can’t alternate 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 may depart companies getting into comparable info repeatedly whereas businesses 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 might present a visual authentication function, nevertheless it can be falsified, eliminated, copied or improperly reused if safety and verification procedures are insufficient.
Digital identifiers are usually not resistant to 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 right response is to not assume that every one bodily stamps are out of date, nor that each digital various is superior. It is to check obtainable fashions in opposition to measurable standards: authentication accuracy, resistance to fraud, ease of verification, implementation price, production-line pace, knowledge safety, interoperability and the means to detect illicit provide chains.
A hybrid system could also be justified in circumstances the place a bodily safety function offers a demonstrable benefit. But the place a digital identifier linked to a safe, interoperable database can ship the identical consequence at decrease price, requiring a bodily stamp might quantity to pointless friction.
The authorities also needs to 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 techniques, together with the danger that paper-based marks will be falsified.
Such claims warrant impartial 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 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 current techniques.
A pilot programme with impartial analysis may assist set up whether or not the system improves compliance and authentication in apply. The outcomes must be made public, and the authorities must be ready to switch the design if the proof reveals that the system is just too expensive 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 will probably be protected, which businesses 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 gather income with higher precision and decrease price, whereas permitting respectable companies to give attention to producing and distributing items.
A contemporary tax administration isn’t one which deploys the best variety of platforms, however one which makes its techniques 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 mandatory operate that current infrastructure can’t adequately ship.
If that proof is absent, the hybrid system must 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 kind and cease imposing further compliance burdens on respectable producers with out first proving that the system delivers advantages current infrastructure can’t present.
Nigeria can’t credibly pursue tax reform, industrial enlargement, job creation and financial competitiveness whereas permitting regulatory duplication to extend manufacturing prices, complicate manufacturing unit operations and probably push costs greater for shoppers.
The Nigeria Customs Service must reveal, with verifiable proof, why the current 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 must be suspended and subjected to an impartial technical, authorized and financial assessment. Nigeria wants smarter tax enforcement, not one other layer of paperwork; stronger digital integration, not expensive 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 dedication, nevertheless it must not make compliant producers and odd Nigerians pay the worth for an inadequately justified policy.
Kunle Adebisi, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
