FIRS engages oil, gas stakeholders on e-invoicing system ahead of July launch

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), on Monday, engaged with stakeholders in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry as it prepares to launch its electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) system on July 25, 2025.

The event provided a platform for the FIRS to sensitise the stakeholders, exposing them to the features and benefits of the system.

The FIRS said the e-invoicing system is a reporting tool meant to streamline tax processes, enhance compliance with fiscal regulations, help businesses with financial insight and capital management, and expand their global reach by facilitating transactions with firms outside Nigeria.

Speaking at the event in Lagos, Richard Kimeku, director of technology department at FIRS, described the initiative as a strategic effort to upgrade Nigeria’s fiscal transaction systems and enhance transparency and accountability in tax administration.

“This is not just a digital upgrade, it is a federal government-backed initiative designed to create robust visibility of digital business transactions across the entire country for both FIRS and taxpayers,” Kimeku said.

“For both FIRS and taxpayers, it represents a major step forward in making tax administration and compliance more accurate.”

He said the initiative aims to significantly boost transparency in tax administration by capturing transactional data directly from taxpayers.

The director clarified that the system is not a payment platform but a tool designed to provide visibility into business transactions, thereby making tax compliance and administration more transparent, accurate, and efficient.

According to Kimeku, the phased approach will begin with large taxpayers and later extend to medium and small enterprises.

“We are adopting a fiscal approach. We are starting with the large taxpayers first. After that, we will go to the medium taxpayers, based on the categorisation of their turnover,” he said.

“Once it is being adopted by the large taxpayers, I think we have started. It is a gradual, fiscal approach. From that categorisation, we will go down to the medium taxpayers, then to the emerging taxpayers.”

‘WE HAVE LARGE TAXPAYERS PILOTING’

Sadiq Arogundade, lead consultant for e-invoicing at the FIRS, said the platform has been built using international standards and is ready for deployment.

He added that many large taxpayers have already started pilot testing.

Arogundade said flexibility has been built into the system to allow companies to either report in real-time or near real-time.

“The system is ready. It is completely ready. We have several large taxpayers that are piloting at the moment,” the consultant said.

“Some are ready to go live with the system and then we have already set a date to go live which is July 25th. That is the date that we have set to go live.”

While the platform will be available to all businesses from July 25, he clarified that adoption is not yet mandatory.

“There is no mandatory use of the e-invoicing at the moment. I don’t know what the plan is. But what I know is that the system will be fully available for whoever is interested to enable their businesses,” he said.

On his part, Mike Adoga, acting director of tax automation at FIRS, said the e-invoicing system is a multi-layered ecosystem comprising several components, including the merchandise system — which generates invoice reference numbers — and the merchant business solution (MBS) solution (MBS) 360 mobile application.

In September 2024, FIRS the announced it will introduce an e-invoice to improve the tax system in Nigeria.