Private Jets, Rented Apartments and No Land Use Charge: Is It Time to Tax Nigeria’s Churches?

• Nigerian religious bodies are exempt from companies income tax
• Forbes Africa said religious institutions contribute about 2.5% of Nigeria’s GDP
• A former minister accused some of building empires while avoiding land use charges
• Proposals included taxing churches’ commercial profits and requiring audits

When oil prices fell and Nigeria’s public finances came under strain, the search for new revenue turned towards the country’s churches. In June 2017, Forbes Africa asked plainly whether it was time to tax them.

Religious institutions in Nigeria are exempt from tax under Section 23 of the Companies Income Tax Act. Yet the article estimated that religious bodies contribute around 2.5% of the country’s GDP, roughly as much as the financial sector. It also recalled that in 2011 Forbes had counted five Nigerian pastors among the world’s ten richest, with David Oyedepo at the top of that list on an estimated net worth of $150 million.

The sharpest criticism came from a former minister, Chief Demola Seriki, who argued that some religious institutions “are not carrying out charitable activities but building empires”. He pointed to the purchase of private jets and the renting out of apartments while, he said, they avoided paying land use charges, the property levy that owners pay in Lagos.

The article set out two routes for reform. The first, which it described as the Mozambique model, would tax profits from churches’ non-religious businesses, such as schools, daycare centres and universities, while leaving worship itself untouched. The second would require religious bodies to submit to audits so that commercial income could be identified, with those that refused losing their registered status.

The same question comes up regularly in Jamaica: where does worship end and business begin? A church that owns a sanctuary is in a different position from one that also rents out apartments, runs fee-paying schools or holds land as an investment. Separating the two, with honest accounts and clear rules on which property qualifies for relief, protects churches’ genuine exemptions and makes them easier to defend. For diaspora Jamaicans who give generously to churches at home, it is also a reasonable basis for asking how church property is being used.