The Federal Government is set to release the names of 18 banks owing Nigerian telecom operators nearly ₦200 billion in Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) charges.

This debt, accumulated over several years, has remained unresolved despite persistent demands for payment from the telcos.

The move, expected to be announced tomorrow, appears to be aimed at compelling the telcos to cease providing USSD services to these banks.

These services enable seamless online banking for millions of customers across the country.

Telcos have also issued threats of a telecom blackout in nine states, intensifying concerns about the implications of this standoff on banking and communication services nationwide.

Nigerian banks and the federal government, through the Federal Inland Revenue Service, have been enmeshed in disagreement over how much should be paid in a one-off foreign exchange windfall tax, two weeks after an initial deadline elapsed.

Recall that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in July 2024 sought lawmakers’ approval for a 50 percent tax on banks’ realised foreign exchange gains following the naira devaluation on June 14, 2023.

Thereafter, both chambers of the National Assembly passed the bill seeking the one-off tax, called the wildfall tax, with the Senate raising the rate to 70 percent.

Nigerian top-tier banks were to be debited by the CBN on December 31, 2024, for the windfall tax.

However, Business Day on Monday reports that barely two days after the deadline, Nigerian banks are yet to give in on the windfall tax implementation.

The banks and the FIRS, however, can’t seem to agree on the tax due, two weeks after the payment deadline.

“The banks are having a quiet tango with the FIRS on the windfall tax issue at the moment,” a source familiar with the matter told Business Day.

“The banks are arguing with the FIRS on the calculated sums of tax due and are reverting with their own calculations based on the same principles the FIRS is basing its numbers on.

“All banks were going to be debited on December 31 by the CBN based on FIRS numbers, but the coordinating minister of the economy said no.

“Most of the banks now live in fear of being hammered anytime from now by the CBN based on whatever FIRS wants to do,” the source further said.

The windfall tax comes as the Nigerian banks benefit from Tinubu’s foreign exchange reform in 2023, which led to an initial 40 percent devaluation of the currency.

Four of Nigeria’s five largest banks recorded huge foreign exchange revaluation gains in 2023, with First Bank of Nigeria Holdings the only exception.

To this end, reports have it that Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Guarantee Trust Bank, and United Bank for Africa saw their combined gross earnings more than double to N8 trillion in 2023.

Similarly, profit before tax for the four banks jumped more than two-fold to N2.9 trillion, according to the results declared for the year.

Gains made from currency revaluation account for as much as a third or more of their entire profit for the year under consideration, according to the credit-rating agency Moody’s, which covers the top nine Nigerian lenders.

The Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, in July said the windfall tax is a recovery plan to balance the Nigerian economy.

This comes amid the opposition by stakeholders in the banking sector.

However, Femi Otedola, the chairman of FBNH, whose bank was not affected, backed the federal government on the implementation of the windfall tax.

The tax will see the federal government rank in 70 percent of the N3.7 trillion FX gain by banks in 2023.

A former Special Adviser to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari on agriculture, Dolapo Bright, has said that President Bola Tinubu was misled by his advisers that the suspension of duties, tariffs, and taxes on the importation of food staples through land and sea borders would reduce inflation.

Bright made this statement on Sunday’s edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.

The ex-aide said the surge in the cost of diesel and petrol which are essential to the transportation of food items, have grossly affected the prices of commodities.

A former Special Adviser to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari on agriculture, Dolapo Bright, has said that President Bola Tinubu was misled by his advisers that the suspension of duties, tariffs, and taxes on the importation of food staples through land and sea borders would reduce inflation.

Bright made this statement on Sunday’s edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.

The ex-aide said the surge in the cost of diesel and petrol which are essential to the transportation of food items, have grossly affected the prices of commodities.

“I don’t think it happened. The person who advised the government to do that, the person is clueless, if you understand what is happening, you won’t give such advice.

“The person is misleading the president. Do you know why? Let’s assume that you are going to import. Importation is going to be into Lagos. Are you not going to transport the thing to other states? It doesn’t make sense because that is going to make our agriculture stagnant,” he said

Ekwutosblog reports that food and commodity inflation have skyrocketed as Nigerians battle what can pass for the worst cost of living crisis since the country’s independence over six decades ago.

Recall that when President Tinubu was sworn in as president in May 2023, Nigeria’s inflation rate was 22.41%, according to official numbers by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.

The inflation rate increased astronomically to 34.6% in November 2024, more than 12% higher, a development that economic wizards have attributed to Tinubu’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the forex rates.

Significantly, the food inflation rate in November 2024 was 39.93% on a year-on-year basis, from 32.84% recorded in November 2023.

The surge in food inflation has increased the average prices of fish, rice, yam flour, millet whole grain, corn flour, egg, milk, milk, frozen chicken, among others.

To stem food inflation, the Tinubu administration in July 2024 announced the suspension of customs duties on imported food items but the policy has reportedly not seen the light of the day due to bureaucratic bottlenecks.

According to Bright, who was Buhari’s aide on agriculture from 2015 to 2023, the government has been partly responsible for inflation because the administration is trying to sit on the driver’s side of agriculture instead of allowing the private sector to do so.

He further stated that farmers won’t necessarily need the government’s intervention if the right environment is set for them to make a decent profit.

“A lot of farmers are not producing the capacity they were producing before because of high input costs,” he said.

Recall that on December 23, 2024, during the president’s first chat, he said he has “lover 2,000 tractors coming into this country for mechanised farming to make farming easier.

However, Bright said tractors only won’t solve the food shortage problem in Nigeria.

He argued that using local labour would ensure job creation for locals and that over 80% of farmers in Nigeria are into subsistence farming.