Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 13 February 2026 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed Executive Order No. 9 of 2026 directing all Production Sharing Contract operators and contractors to remit Royalty Oil, Tax Oil, Profit Oil, and Profit Gas directly to the Federation Account, bypassing prior NNPC Limited intermediated collection. The order simultaneously eliminates NNPC Limited's 30% management fee on profit oil/gas, suspends the 30% Frontier Exploration Fund deduction, and redirects Gas Flare Penalty proceeds to the Federation Account — materially walking back the fiscal architecture established under Petroleum Industry Act 2021 §§ 9 and 53. An Implementation Committee chaired by the Minister of Finance was established to operationalise the order and resolve disputes.

On 26 June 2025 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four acts constituting Nigeria's most comprehensive fiscal overhaul in decades: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025. The NTA consolidates and repeals six core statutes — CITA, PITA, PPTA, VAT Act, CGT Act, and Stamp Duties Act — into a single unified code effective 1 January 2026, while the NTAA standardises assessment, filing, and enforcement procedures across all federal taxes. The two establishment acts restructure the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) with a broadened mandate and create an empowered Joint Revenue Board to coordinate federal-state fiscal relations.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Upstream Petroleum Operations (Cost Efficiency Incentives) Order, 2025 on 29 May 2025, introducing a performance-based tax-credit framework for upstream oil and gas operators who beat NUPRC-set Unit Operating Cost benchmarks. Eligible lessees, licensees, and PSC contractors receive tax credits capped at 20% of their annual petroleum tax liability per licence area, applied against Petroleum Profits Tax, Hydrocarbon Tax, or Companies Income Tax. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) conducts annual terrain-specific (onshore, shallow-water, deep-offshore) Unit Operating Cost benchmarking, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) co-administers with claw-back provisions for non-compliance; the regime runs through 31 May 2035.

The Nigeria Data Protection Commission issued the General Application and Implementation Directive (GAID) 2025 on 20 March 2025, the principal implementing directive of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA). The GAID came fully into force on 19 September 2025, replacing the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) 2019 as the operative enforcement instrument. It applies extraterritorially to any data controller or processor established outside Nigeria that processes personal data of Nigerian data subjects, imposes a tripartite cross-border transfer framework (adequacy decisions, Transfer Instruments, and statutory exceptions), mandates Data Protection Impact Assessments for AI and high-risk technologies, and carries a civil-penalty ceiling of 2% of annual gross revenue or NGN 10 million for designated data controllers and processors of major importance (DCPMIs), whichever is greater.

On 28 February 2024 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed one executive order and two presidential directives to revive upstream oil and gas investment in Nigeria after years of declining FDI: (i) the Oil and Gas Companies (Tax Incentives, Exemption, Remission, etc.) Order, 2024 — establishing a gas tax credit for non-associated gas (NAG) greenfield projects and fiscal enablers for deep-water oil and gas; (ii) the Presidential Directive on Local Content Compliance Requirements, 2024 — instructing the NCDMB to adapt enforcement of the Local Content Act to in-country capacity gaps; and (iii) the Presidential Directive on Reduction of Petroleum Sector Contracting Costs and Timelines, 2024 — streamlining NUPRC and NNPCL contracting approvals. Effective immediately on signing.

Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's Renewed Hope Agenda, Minister of Solid Minerals Development Dr. Dele Alake unveiled a Seven-Point Agenda in September 2023 to transform Nigeria's solid-minerals sector — later operationalised as the Energy Transition and Critical Minerals (ETCM) Roadmap framework. The agenda mandates joint ventures between mining multinationals and Nigerian partners, formalises artisanal miners, establishes the Mines Surveillance Task Force, audits all mining licences, builds big-data inventories on seven priority minerals, and authorises six domestic Mineral Processing Centres. In 2024 President Tinubu directed that mining licences be issued only to firms that build in-country processing capacity — effectively banning raw-ore export of lithium and other critical minerals — and the Federal Government revoked 924 dormant licences in April 2024. It is the first Nigerian framework explicitly tying raw-mineral export curbs to downstream-processing mandates, paralleling Indonesia hilirisasi, DRC ARECOMS and Zimbabwe lithium- concentrate regimes.