A debate has erupted following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and France’s Direction Générale des Finances Publiques (DGFiP) on December 10.
While the FIRS stated that the deal is a critical step toward digital tax administration, legal experts and opposition figures are raising alarms over data sovereignty.
The partnership aims to leverage on the decades of experience in AI-powered audits of France and the automated compliance systems as the FIRS plan to adopt this into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) in January 2026.
Oladipupo Ige, a legal expert argued that even advisory access can lead to data exposure, potentially giving a foreign power visibility into Nigeria’s economic heartbeat.
Dr. Segun Adebayo warned that aggregated data, though anonymized, can reveal vulnerabilities, industry-specific compliance gaps, and revenue dependencies, providing France with leverage in future trade and loan negotiations.
Meanwhile, the FIRS maintains that no raw taxpayer data will leave the country.
The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) is expected to conduct an independent review of the MoU. Meanwhile, opposition parties and the Northern Elders Forum are calling for the suspension of the deal until full public disclosure of the terms is made to the National Assembly.
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