Nigeria, June 23 -- When I learnt that the Tinubu administration was inaugurating a Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, I was cautiously optimistic. As one who has spent nearly a decade studying tax reform in Nigeria, I've seen too many promising initiatives stall or collapse under poor design, lack of coordination, or political interference.

Take, for instance, the FIRS' protracted struggle with implementing unified digital tax systems. Over the years, the agency has experimented with multiple platforms, often without interoperability. Or consider the challenge of aligning tax administration with Nigeria's fragmented identity infrastructure - BVN, NIN, voter IDs, and others - which has undermined reliable taxpayer t...