Nigeria’s Digital Portals: Ease of Business or Frustration?

Nigeria’s leaders enjoy making grand announcements. At each government event, another ribbon-cutting ceremony takes place, with millions reportedly spent on “state-of-the-art” websites and digital platforms. We are told these portals will transform business, streamline processes, and position Nigeria on the global ease-of-doing-business index.

But reality tells a different story. These platforms often resemble a faulty socket—the switch flicks on and off, sometimes seeming active but rarely delivering power. Instead of simplifying business, they make it more complicated. Amid the chaos, a familiar Nigerian pattern emerges: frustrated citizens are quietly pushed towards “back-door” solutions, where government staff offer the same services—at a price.

So one has to ask: are we dealing with one government platform or two? One official but dysfunctional, the other unofficial but profitable for insiders?

FIRS and the OTP That Never Came

Let me illustrate with a personal experience. Recently, I attempted to validate my business Tax Identification Number (TIN) on the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) portal. I logged onto their verification site (https://apps.firs.gov.ng/tinverification) only to be bounced off with an error message. The site directed me to use TaxPro Max instead.

Obediently, I visited the TaxPro Max website, entered my business details, and waited for a One-Time Password (OTP). The system assured me, “An OTP has been sent. You need to wait 24 before trying again.” 

Twenty-four what? Minutes? Hours? Days? The site never specified. I checked my email repeatedly. Nothing. Hours of waiting turned into frustration. I was left stranded by a federal government platform that apparently cannot send a simple OTP in 2025.

Meanwhile, if you ask around at the tax office, a familiar whisper follows: “Oga, just settle us; we’ll sort it out.”

This is not digitalisation. This is digitalised frustration.

The Bigger Sabotage

And the tragedy is this: Nigeria has become a country where official inefficiency drives unofficial profiteering. Many of these so-called “digital reforms” are either:

1. Damaged by poor design—portals that are awkward, confusing, and incomplete.

2. Deliberately broken—sabotaged by staff who want citizens to come begging, wallet in hand.

Either way, the outcome remains unchanged. Honest business owners are penalised, while corrupt insiders prosper.

And the government’s talk of “ease of doing business” becomes laughable.

National Losses, Not Just Personal Ones

This isn’t just my inconvenience. It is a national economic wound. Every hour wasted on a frozen site, every entrepreneur driven away by needless hurdles, every investor discouraged by inefficiency—these are missed opportunities for Nigeria.

Countries competing with us are streamlining their processes, cutting red tape, and truly embracing digital efficiency. Meanwhile, we are stuck waiting for OTPs that never arrive.

How can we expect to attract foreign investment when our local businesses cannot even validate a tax number without resorting to begging or bribery?

Enough of Excuses

This is 2025. Nigerians deserve more than just excuses and error messages. We cannot keep spending billions on websites that collapse under the weight of the very citizens they were built to serve. We cannot keep announcing reforms that die the moment they are launched.

If this government is truly serious about digitalisation and the ease of doing business, then it must prove it—not with speeches, but with working systems.

Repair the portals. Audit the contractors. Punish the saboteurs. Protect the entrepreneurs.

Every time a Nigerian business owner is stranded by a broken government platform, Nigeria itself is left stranded. And until these digital roadblocks are removed, the promise of national greatness will remain nothing but a slogan.

The message is clear: Stop annoying those who are working to build this country.