The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) says the introduction of electronic invoicing will improve tax compliance, reduce leakages and enhance transparency in Nigeria’s tax administration system.
Mr Mohammed Bawa, Project Lead, NRS E-Invoicing Project, said this at the DigiTax E-Invoicing Compliance Breakfast Session held recently in Lagos.
The event was organised by DigiTax, an NRS-accredited e-invoicing platform, as part of efforts to support the NRS’s ongoing education and sensitisation campaign around the e-invoicing mandate.
Bawa said the initiative aligned with global trends in tax digitisation and would help Nigeria improve its tax to GDP ratio, which remains among the lowest in Africa.
According to him, the system will provide the NRS with better visibility into transactions across sectors and help formalise activities within the informal economy.
He said e-invoicing would standardise invoice formats nationwide using globally recognised invoice schemas and improve efficiency for businesses and tax authorities.
Bawa said the initiative would also support the NRS transition from manual and electronic tax administration processes to a fully automated system to system interaction model.
He noted that the legal framework for implementation was provided under the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, which prescribes penalties for non compliance.
According to him, the NRS has completed the onboarding phase for large taxpayers and is preparing to enforce compliance among defaulting entities.
Bawa said medium taxpayers were expected to begin compliance in the third quarter of 2026, while onboarding of emerging taxpayers would commence in 2027.
He said the NRS targets full adoption of e-invoicing by all taxpayers by the end of 2028.
Also speaking, Mr Olumide Akinsola, Country Director, DigiTax Nigeria, said businesses should look beyond their own systems and assess the compliance status of their suppliers and counterparties.
Akinsola said a business whose suppliers were not transmitting invoices through the MBS platform risked being unable to claim VAT input credits on those transactions.
He said this supply chain exposure represented a significant commercial risk that many businesses had yet to quantify.
Akinsola said DigiTax had launched a whitepaper titled “The State of E-Invoicing Readiness in Nigeria” at the event, examining compliance adoption trends and the readiness gap across taxpayer segments.
He said DigiTax operates across Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and the UAE, and that lessons from those markets showed that businesses which integrated early avoided the disruption that typically accompanied enforcement deadlines.
Mr Alexander Ogunsina, IT Project Manager, D’Accubin Solutions, said Nigeria’s e-invoicing framework had been built on international standards including PEPPOL, BIS 3.0 and UBL 2.1.
Ogunsina said the framework’s alignment with global standards meant Nigerian invoices were compatible with international trade requirements.
Bawa urged taxpayers yet to onboard to begin the process and work with accredited service providers to achieve compliance.
