Photo File: Adewole Adebayo

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Adewole Adebayo, has described President Bola Tinubu as a “well-known tax collector.”

Speaking on a media outlet on Tuesday, Adebayo said Tinubu had introduced a more organized tax collection system during his tenure as Lagos State governor and has now extended the approach to the federal level.

“Everybody knows that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a well-known tax collector. But that tax collection is an improvement over a disorganized system he met on the ground,” Adebayo stated. “He did tax collection in Lagos and he came to do tax collection in Abuja. The problem with Hon. Dogara’s speech is that he is overstating it. This reform is not the best but is far better than what we had.”

The opposition politician nonetheless acknowledged that Tinubu had recorded some progress in managing Nigeria’s economy compared to his predecessor, former President Muhammadu Buhari.

“It’s obvious that the economy that President Buhari left was a poorly managed economy, and was an emergency room patient,” he said. “What President Tinubu has done is to stabilise the patient, but I’m not sure that he has managed to know the ailment. So the patient is not going to die imminently, but he hasn’t found a cure.”

Adebayo added, “He hasn’t been able to identify the problem, the ailment that is disturbing the patient, but as an emergency room doctor he is taking some steps, some of it actually aggravated the case of the patient, but over time, he appears to have one or two wins in two sectors, which is why it appears that they might be deceived into thinking that the patient is on his road to recovery.”

On June 26, 2025, President Tinubu signed four major tax reform bills into law, overhauling Nigeria’s tax system to simplify tax collection and ease the burden on low-income earners and small businesses. These new laws are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026.