President Bola Tinubu on Monday swore in Taiwo Oyedele as minister of state for finance at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
Mr Oyedele’s swearing-in came five days after the Senate confirmed his nomination.
Lawmakers approved the appointment on March 12 through a voice vote after a screening session that lasted over two hours. Senate President Godswill Akpabio announced the confirmation after members of the Committee of the Whole adopted the recommendation.
President Tinubu had sent Oyedele’s nomination to the Senate on March 3 in a letter to Akpabio, asking the lawmakers to confirm the appointment in line with Section 147(2) of the 1999 Constitution.
Oyedele is from Ikaram in Akoko, Ondo State. Before his appointment, he served as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms.
The committee, inaugurated in August 2023, worked on changes to the country’s tax system. It produced four bills, the Nigeria Tax Bill, the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Bill.
The National Assembly passed the bills in 2025. Tinubu signed them into law on June 26, 2025, and the reforms took effect on January 1.
The changes include zero income tax for Nigerians earning N800,000 or less per year and tax exemptions for small businesses with turnover below N50 million from company income tax, capital gains tax and withholding tax.
Taiwo Oyedele spent 22 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he served as fiscal policy partner and Africa tax leader.
He holds a Higher National Diploma in accountancy and finance from Yaba College of Technology and a degree 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 Harvard Kennedy School.
Oyedele serves as a professor at Babcock University and as a visiting scholar at Lagos Business School.
He replaces Doris Uzoka-Anite, who has been moved to the Ministry of Budget and National Planning as minister of state.
