How to verify a message about tax, your NIN or a government grant

How to verify a message about tax, your NIN or a government grant

"You have been selected for the Federal Government grant of ₦250,000. Pay the ₦5,000 processing fee here to receive it." Or the opposite: "Final notice: you have unpaid tax. Pay now to avoid penalties." Or: "Your SIM will be barred unless you update your NIN here." Government bodies make an excellent disguise for fraud: everyone knows them, nobody wants trouble with them, and their real procedures are unfamiliar enough that a fake message looks plausible.

These campaigns come in waves and repeat the same skeleton as fake bank texts and the fake parcel SMS: a known name + money at stake (in your favour or against you) + urgency + a link. Learn to check one and you can check them all.

The key rule: never deal with a government body through a link in a text

Remember two things:

1. Do not give your bank details, BVN, NIN, PIN or an OTP, or pay anything, through a link in an unexpected text, email or WhatsApp message, whoever it claims to come from. Reach the agency yourself, through its official website or one of its offices. You do not need to know how the agency sends its messages: you only need to contact it on your own terms.
2. Receiving money never requires your PIN, an OTP or your card details. A "grant", "palliative" or "refund" that first asks for a fee or for those details is fake.

Any message that pushes you to tap a link to collect, pay or "regularise" something with a government body is suspicious by default. Not because these bodies never send messages, but because acting through the link is never the safe way to deal with them.

What the fake message looks like

• The grant or palliative. "Federal Government grant", "CBN palliative" or "N-Power payment" messages offering money in exchange for a "processing fee", your BVN or your card details. They lead to a fake site or a WhatsApp chat where the fees never stop.
• The tax debt or refund. "Unpaid tax", "penalty", "final notice", or a refund that is supposedly waiting for you. It plays on fear or on hope, but the destination is the same: your details and your money.
• The NIN or BVN update. Because every SIM has to be linked to a NIN, "update your NIN or lose your line" messages sound believable. They ask for your NIN, BVN, date of birth and sometimes an OTP, which is everything needed to take over your line or your bank account.
• The pension message. Texts about your pension or Retirement Savings Account asking you to "update your records" through a link. Same trap, different costume.
• Lookalike addresses. Links containing words like "grant", "palliative", "nimc", "tax" or "update" with hyphens and extra words, on addresses that are not official. Official government sites normally end in .gov.ng, and an address that only contains "gov" somewhere in the middle is not one of them.
• A sender that proves nothing. As with any text: the sender name can be faked and proves or disproves nothing.

How to check whether anything is real

The method is the usual one: close the message and go to the official channel yourself. With government bodies it is even clearer, because each one has its own official website:

1. Do not tap the link. Close it.
2. Go to the official site yourself. Type the address into your browser: for NIN matters, the National Identity Management Commission at nimc.gov.ng; for personal income tax, your State Internal Revenue Service (in Lagos, the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service, LIRS); for federal taxes, the federal tax authority's official .gov.ng website; for pensions, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) or your pension provider. Do not arrive through the link in the message or a hasty search.
3. Check there, or ask in person. If there is a tax liability, a refund, a NIN problem or a payment due to you, the agency will confirm it through its official channels. If nothing shows up, the message was fake.
4. If you are not comfortable online, call the official phone numbers (looked up by you on the official website, not in the message) or visit one of the agency's offices.

If something real exists, you deal with it through the official channel, never through a link in a message. It is exactly the same habit we recommend for checking a call or SMS from your bank.

What to do if you already tapped or gave details

• You only tapped and closed it: almost certainly nothing happened. Block, delete and move on.
• You entered card details: call your bank now, block the card and ask for a new one. Watch your debit alerts over the coming weeks.
• You gave your BVN, a PIN or an OTP: call your bank immediately, explain what happened and change your PIN and banking passwords. If your line suddenly loses signal, call your network too: someone may be trying to take over your number.
• You paid a "processing fee": tell your bank at once with the transaction details. The sooner they know, the better the chance of stopping the money.
• Report it to the police through the NPF-NCCC e-reporting portal, with screenshots of the message and the link. If you lost money, you can also report it to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which takes reports of financial fraud.
• Report the sender's number in the spam numbers directory.

Quick questions

Does the tax authority ever really send texts? Tax authorities can send reminders, but you never need the link in a message to act on one: log in or call through the official channel yourself. When in doubt, treat the message as unverified and check on the official site.

What about "grant", "palliative" or N-Power messages? The same rule applies. A genuine payment never needs your PIN or an OTP, and you should never pay a fee to receive money. Check on the official .gov.ng website of the programme or agency named in the message, which you find yourself, not through the message.

What about messages asking me to update my NIN or BVN? Do not do it through the message. NIN matters go through NIMC and its official channels, and your BVN through your own bank. Contact them directly.

Is an email with the official logo more trustworthy than a text? No. A logo can be copied in a minute and the sender of an email can be faked too. Apply the same rule: no links from incoming messages; go to the official site yourself.

If you have received one of these messages, report it in the NoCall spam numbers directory: these campaigns change their disguise with whatever is in the news, and your report helps the next person recognise the pattern in time.