This article explores the legal conflict of national data sovereignty and foreign technical cooperation in today’s practice of tax administration. The problem animating this research is the Memorandum of Understanding recently signed between Nigeria’s Nigeria Revenue Service and the French tax authority, eliciting public concern that it may pose risks to sensitive fiscal information and national sovereignty. This article seeks to critically analyse the legal validity, extent and implications of such cooperative arrangements; specifically, it seeks to determine how compatible they are with Nigerian constitutional principles and data protection laws on one hand and international cooperation standards in taxation on the other. Firmly based on the theoretical rationale of digital sovereignty and regulatory governance theory, the study posits that foreign technical assistance in tax administration is not inherently a threat to state sovereignty, but rather problematic where specific legal safeguards, transparency and accountability are lacking. The study recommends a recalibration of Nigeria’s tax cooperation apparatus to balance the efficiency logic underpinning international collaboration with concerns for data stewardship and democratic supervision. It suggests clearer statutory definition of the limits on cross-border tax coordination, better protection against data localization and safeguarding standards for foreign nationals’ data, closer parliamentary scrutiny of executive agreements or traditional contracts with other countries, and increased indigenous technical capacity to diminish reliance on external administrative support over time
Meshach N. Umenweke (Tue,) studied this question.