Tax Reform Squeezes Big Firms. Who Gets the Money?

Nigeria's biggest companies handed N3.412 trillion to the state in income taxes in the nine months to September 2026, up 73.31 percent from N1.968 trillion over the same stretch of 2025. The apparatus is counting its winnings, and the headline number is meant to impress.

The haul comes from 23 of the top Nigerian Exchange (NGX 30) companies, among them Dangote Cement, MTN Nigeria, BUA Cement, Seplat Energy, Aradel Holdings, Zenith Bank, GTCO, Nestle Nigeria and Access Holdings. These are the firms that sit at the top of the pile. Their payments flow upward to a treasury that answers to them as much as to anyone.

Who Has the Power

Two sectors carry the load. Oil and gas companies paid N1,376.08 billion, or 40.33 percent of the total. Banking and financial services paid N1,322.77 billion, or 38.77 percent. Together that's 79 percent of the money, from a handful of industries that already hold most of the economic cards.

The rest is a long tail. Telecommunications paid N295.36 billion, industrial goods N258.73 billion, consumer goods N98.22 billion, and agricultural companies N55.19 billion. Hospitality managed N4.66 billion and power companies just N1.01 billion.

Tax expert Yvonne Afolabi was blunt about what the number really means. The increase, she said, largely reflected improved profitability among the firms, and the standard 30 percent corporate income tax rate stayed unchanged from 2025. She added that it also highlights the limitations of Nigeria's narrow tax base, rather than a significant expansion in the number of businesses contributing to government revenue.

Read that again. The state is leaning harder on the same few giants because the base hasn't widened. That's not a revolution in fairness. It's the same pyramid, squeezed from the top.

What They're Calling "Reform"

The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 took effect on January 1, 2026, and has been in effect for about ten months. It rolled the Tertiary Education Tax, the NITDA levy, the NASENI levy and the Police Trust Fund levy into a single consolidated 4 percent development levy, and added a minimum effective tax rate for qualifying companies. The pitch is that it streamlines the system while shifting more of the burden toward larger, more profitable businesses and easing the load on smaller firms and low income earners.

Note the word "designed." The reform is designed to do these things. The base article offers no figure showing what low income earners actually gained. What it does show is the state's receipts climbing.

The individual numbers expose how uneven the picture is. Aradel Holdings paid N690.32 billion, against N40 billion a year earlier, as its profit before tax rose 154.32 percent to N764.71 billion. Chief operating officer Adegbite Falade credited higher applicable petroleum tax rates under the old petroleum tax regime, which governs the newly consolidated ND Western and Renaissance operations.

GTCO paid N349.38 billion, up 41.42 percent, even as its profit before tax fell 2.32 percent to N879.90 billion from N900.80 billion. Higher payments, lower profit. The bill doesn't always track the books.

MTN Nigeria's payment surged 1,270.58 percent to N295.36 billion from N21.55 billion. Chief financial officer Modupe Kadri put it down to higher taxable profits and the normalisation of temporary differences that had reduced cash tax outflows the year before. Seplat Energy paid N685.76 billion, up 46.12 percent, and Ecobank paid N331.59 billion, up 11.70 percent.

Where the Money Goes

The base article celebrates "stronger corporate tax contributions to Nigeria's public revenue" and the government's push to diversify away from oil. It says nothing about how that revenue reaches the people at the bottom, or who decides where it lands. Those decisions sit with the same institutions collecting it.

Telecoms operators also pay value-added tax, regulatory charges and spectrum fees on top of income tax. Those costs sit inside the price of every call and data bundle. The state and the corporation settle their account, and the customer is the one holding the invoice.