The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Adewale Adeniyi, has said import duty exemption approvals valued at ₦34 trillion in 2025 significantly constrained the Service’s revenue generation.
Adeniyi made the disclosure during an investigative session of the Senate Committee on Finance with revenue-generating agencies in Abuja.
He said government fiscal policies had continued to affect the revenue-generating capacity of the Nigeria Customs Service, both positively and negatively.
“The NCS would have generated significantly higher revenue over the years if not for government-approved import duty waivers and other external factors affecting collections,” he said.
According to Adeniyi, the Import Duty Exemption Certificate scheme, introduced in March 2020, accounted for about ₦34 trillion in approvals in 2025. He said nearly 60 per cent of the approvals covered duty-free importation of military hardware in response to Nigeria’s security challenges.
He added that other government-backed waivers applied to the importation of compressed natural gas (CNG), electric and hybrid vehicles, healthcare equipment and medical supplies, industrial machinery and manufacturing inputs, as well as food import intervention programmes.
While acknowledging the impact of the waivers on Customs revenue, Adeniyi said fiscal policy should not be assessed solely on the basis of revenue generation but also on its wider economic and social objectives.
He, however, urged the Federal Government to strengthen monitoring mechanisms to ensure beneficiaries of duty waivers deliver the intended outcomes, including lower consumer prices, increased local production and improved access to healthcare.
Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Finance expressed dissatisfaction over the absence of the heads of several government agencies invited to the hearing, including the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Jabi.
The committee’s chairman, Senator Sani Musa, warned that the affected chief executives must appear at its next sitting or face sanctions in accordance with the Senate’s rules.
