President Bola Tinubu on Monday swore in Taiwo Oyedele as Minister of State for Finance at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The swearing-in ceremony took place at the president’s office around 2:30 pm, a source present at the brief event told The Telegraph.
The appointment follows Oyedele’s confirmation by the Nigerian Senate five days earlier.
Our correspondent observed Oyedele and his wife arriving at the Presidential Villa shortly before the ceremony at about 2:09 pm. The new minister wore a navy-blue suit, while his wife was dressed in white traditional attire.
The Senate confirmed Oyedele’s nomination on Wednesday, March 12, through a voice vote after a screening session that lasted more than two hours. Godswill Akpabio announced the confirmation after lawmakers adopted the recommendation of the Committee of the Whole.
President Tinubu had earlier transmitted Oyedele’s nomination to the Senate on March 3 in a letter addressed to Akpabio, seeking confirmation in line with Section 147(2) of the Constitution of Nigeria.
Oyedele, 50, is from Ikaram Akoko in Ondo State and brings more than two decades of experience in fiscal policy and tax administration.
Before his appointment, he served as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, which led a major overhaul of Nigeria’s tax system.
The committee, inaugurated in August 2023, drafted four key reform bills—the Nigeria Tax Bill, the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill, and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Bill, aimed at streamlining Nigeria’s tax framework.
The National Assembly of Nigeria passed the bills in 2025 after extensive debate, and President Tinubu signed them into law on June 26, 2025. The reforms took effect on January 1, 2026, consolidating more than 60 taxes into fewer than 10 statutes.
Among other provisions, the reforms introduced zero income tax for Nigerians earning N800,000 annually or less and exempted small businesses with annual turnover below N50 million from company income tax, capital gains tax and withholding tax, while providing incentives for job creation and wage increases.
Oyedele previously spent 22 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he rose to become Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader before his appointment to head the tax reform committee.
He holds a Higher National Diploma in Accountancy and Finance from Yaba College of Technology and a BSc in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University.
He has also completed executive education programmes at the London School of Economics, Yale University, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Harvard Kennedy School.
Oyedele currently serves as a professor at Babcock University and as a visiting scholar at the Lagos Business School.
He replaces Doris Uzoka-Anite, who has been redeployed as Minister of State at the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning, her third portfolio in the current administration.
During his Senate screening, Oyedele described his nomination as “a call to serve at a critical time when Nigeria faces significant fiscal challenges and remarkable opportunities.”
“With over two decades of experience working with national governments, multilateral institutions and global corporations, my journey across the private sector, academia and public policy has focused on fiscal governance and economic transformation,” he told lawmakers.
