The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) on Thursday unveiled a new tagline, “Inspiring Trust, Sustaining Growth,” as part of its ongoing transformation from a tax-focused agency into a broader revenue administration institution.
The new tagline is expected to shape how the NRS relates to taxpayers while supporting the Federal Government’s drive to increase revenue without relying solely on higher tax rates.
CoS Speaks
Speaking at the unveiling ceremony in Abuja, Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman of the NRS, Tayo Koleosho, said the new identity was designed to build confidence in the country’s revenue administration system.
He said taxpayers must be confident that their data will be protected, their tax assessments will be fair, and their dealings with the revenue authority will be handled professionally.
“The new tagline is ‘Inspiring Trust and Sustaining Growth’. And that encapsulates what the new NRS serves to deliver to Nigerians,” Koleosho said.
According to him, trust is essential to improving voluntary compliance and increasing revenue collection.
“If we don’t start from inside, where our staff understands that the job of revenue collection involves people trusting each other, then we cannot achieve the objective,” he said.
Growth Of Businesses
Koleosho said the NRS also wanted taxpayers to understand that the Service was interested in the growth of their businesses because a larger and stronger economy would ultimately provide a wider revenue base for government.
He referred to the philosophy of NRS Executive Chairman, Dr Zacch Adedeji, that the Service wants to “tax the fruit, not the seed.”
He explained that businesses should be allowed to grow from emerging companies into medium-sized and eventually large businesses, creating more economic activity and, in turn, more revenue for the government.
“The more you grow, the more the tax authority collects. So that will then help us to sustain the growth on our side,” he said.
The NRS leadership also expressed confidence that the Service would meet the revenue target set by the Federal Government for 2026.
Koleosho attributed the revenue authority’s performance to economic growth, increased productivity, and improvements in tax administration.
He said the recent changes in tax administration were not based on increasing tax rates, but on improving the efficiency with which existing taxes are assessed and collected.
“The new tax bill and everything has stabilised in terms of the rate; there’s no new rate increase. It’s just our ability for the Service to do better in terms of how we are collecting from taxpayers,” he said.
According to him, the NRS’s digital transformation programme is also making it easier for companies to comply with their tax obligations.
He cited electronic invoicing and the new 360 tax payment system as examples of reforms designed to reduce the time and disruption businesses face when dealing with tax authorities.
“These have helped companies to have less time in terms of disruption to their business when they are paying their taxes,” he said.
Koleosho said the combination of economic growth and more efficient tax administration had created a situation where government could collect more revenue without increasing tax rates.
He expressed confidence that the trend would continue and that the NRS would meet the revenue target set by the government before the end of the year.
The new tagline is also expected to support the Federal Government’s ambition of growing the Nigerian economy to $1 trillion by 2030. Koleosho said the objective could not be achieved without public confidence in government institutions and the systems they operate through.
He said the NRS wanted to use trust as a basis for stronger taxpayer participation and sustained economic growth.
Group Director, Transformation and Strategy of the NRS, Alfred Okoh, said the new tagline reflected the Service’s broader responsibilities under its new legal framework.
According to him, the NRS has moved beyond the traditional focus on taxes to a wider revenue administration role that includes non-tax revenues.
“We’re now a new revenue administration, and we’re not just talking taxes. So there are non-tax revenues that we are also accounting for with the new tax law, and therefore, the new tagline is reflective of that ambition,” Okoh said.
He said the transition from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to the Nigeria Revenue Service, together with the new NRS Establishment Act, formed part of the wider transformation of revenue administration in the country.
Okoh said the new tagline differed deliberately from the previous FIRS identity because the NRS mandate had broadened.
“We’re moving away from the previous tagline that was tax-focused, to the new tagline that is focused on revenue administration: ‘Inspiring Trust, Sustaining Growth’,” he said.
He added that the Service was focused on expanding revenue coverage, improving its relationship with taxpayers and supporting the country’s economic growth objectives.
The new tagline emerged from an internal competition that attracted 3,308 submissions from NRS employees within six working days after the exercise began on August 10.
Okoh said every directorate participated, with entries received from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
He said the large number of submissions showed how involved employees had become in shaping the identity of the new organisation.
The submissions underwent a three-stage selection process. The initial 3,308 entries were reduced to 112, then 85, before seven finalists were presented to the Tax Controllers Committee of Judges and subsequently to management, which selected the final four.
Okoh said the judges assessed the entries based on strategic alignment, originality, clarity and memorability, as well as their ability to connect with taxpayers and reflect the mission and transformation agenda of the NRS.
He said the exercise was intended to produce more than a catchy phrase.
“We were not looking for clever phrases; we were looking for words capable of carrying a national institution like ours,” he said.
He said successful taglines can connect people with an institution or brand through a few memorable words.
Okoh cited familiar commercial phrases such as Nike’s “Just Do It” and LG’s “Life’s Good”, as well as the former FIRS tagline, “It pays to pay your tax”, as examples of how short phrases can become closely associated with organisations.
He said the NRS wanted the same level of recognition for its new identity.
“Our ambition should be that, just as ‘Just Do It’ reminds us of Nike, or ‘It pays to pay your tax’ reminds us of FIRS, let this new tagline connect directly with revenue administration,” he said.
However, Okoh said the real test of the new tagline would not be its unveiling but how it would be reflected in the daily experience of taxpayers.
He said the words would have to be backed by simpler processes, better use of data, cooperation among NRS employees and more disciplined execution of the Service’s strategy.
“Transformation is not achieved by technology alone, nor by a new logo, nor by a powerful tagline,” he said.
“It is achieved when the words on the wall begin to make sense, when a taxpayer experiences the promise behind the tagline, when our people collaborate across organisational boundaries, when we simplify rather than complicate, when we use data to make better decisions, and when every interaction reinforces the trust and confidence that a modern revenue institution like ours must earn.”
The Chief of Staff also said the NRS was making progress toward its plan to have 80 per cent of its work carried out internally.
He said the 80/20 approach was intended to strengthen NRS employees’ capacity and reduce dependence on external consultants.
Koleosho said the tagline competition was an example of what could be achieved through internal capacity, and that the new tax administration system and electronic invoicing platform were also developed internally.
“The skills are there, and the enthusiasm is there, and we are ready to inspire trust and sustain growth for the country,” he said.
He attributed the development to staff training, skills acquisition and the emergence of a younger workforce capable of supporting the Service’s digital transformation programme.
Director of Change Management, Mrs Olanike Adegoke, said the tagline should reflect the NRS’s collective identity rather than merely a phrase produced by management.
She compared the organisation to an octopus with many hands working towards a single vision, saying the exercise demonstrated the Service’s capacity to adapt to change.
Adegoke said technology drove the process and that employees’ contributions showed the NRS identity was being built collectively.
“This competition reminds us that the identity of the Nigeria Revenue Service is not shaped by top management alone; it is strengthened by the people who make this revenue administration what we are,” she said.
She said the unveiling was therefore not only about the winning tagline but also about the contributions of employees who participated in the process.
The NRS leadership said the new identity would now become the common message of the organisation as it pursues its transformation agenda and seeks to build stronger confidence among taxpayers.
The Service is expected to measure the success of the new tagline not simply by how quickly Nigerians remember it, but by whether the principles of trust and sustained growth become visible in the way revenue administration is carried out across the country.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
