Nigeria makes the fiscalisation system mandatory for every VAT-taxable supplier

What changed in detail

Section 157 of the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 7), headed “Fiscalisation of supplies for VAT”, comes into force on 1 January 2026.

Section 157(1) requires every taxable person making a taxable supply to implement the fiscalisation system deployed by the Service, in accordance with the Nigeria Tax Administration Act.

Section 157(2) defines what that system may consist of: fiscal equipment made up of electronic devices, software solutions, or a communication system over a secured network, or any combination of these, “for electronic invoicing and data transfer as the Service may prescribe or deploy”.

A separate power sits in section 152(4). For the purpose of the invoice rules, the Service may direct any taxable person to use electronic invoices, on at least 30 days’ notice.

The Act does not itself name a system, a technical standard or a timetable. Those are left to the Service.

What it means

Section 157 is the statutory basis for e-invoicing in Nigeria. It makes participation an obligation of the VAT law itself, but leaves the system, the format and the sequencing to the Nigeria Revenue Service. In practice the rollout has run in phases by taxpayer size. The NRS extended the Merchant Buyer Solution to medium taxpayers from 1 July 2026 (ng-merchant-buyer-solution-rollout-2026).

As of November 2026 section 157 is in force as enacted. When a business must connect depends on the NRS phase notices, not on this section alone.