The chairman of the Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS), Zacch Adedeji, has applauded a raft of reforms undertaken by President Bola Tinubu since the start of his tenure, saying it has yielded “a comprehensive reset of the nation’s economic and fiscal infrastructure.”
Mr Adedeji told attendees at the commissioning of the agency’s new three-tower headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday that Nigeria has reported record domestic revenue performance on account of the disciplinary approach that the reforms adopted.
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“Your Excellency restored macroeconomic credibility—unifying foreign exchange markets, clearing longstanding backlogs, and re-establishing confidence in Nigeria’s ability to operate a transparent and market-driven system,” he said.
“These were not easy decisions, but they were necessary ones, and history will recognise them as such.”
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The NRS, under the leadership of Mr Adedeji, whom Mr Tinubu appointed about four months into his presidency, is one of the agencies at the cornerstone of this administration’s fierce drive to grow revenue at scale and align fiscal policies with monetary policies.
It posted a 76 per cent jump in collection for 2024, when revenue touched an all-time peak of N21.6 trillion, and took performance further last year, reporting N28.2 trillion.
For 2026, the agency, previously known as the Federal Inland Revenue Service, is setting sights on N40.7 trillion on the optimism that Nigeria’s adoption of a new tax regime this year will sharply boost collection.
The overhaul of the country’s tax system, which the NRS chief also commended in his address, has been noted as the most extensive of its kind since Nigeria’s colonial days. It streamlined more than 60 tax laws, many of them obsolete and out of tune with global best practice, into a simplified and harmonised framework to ease compliance, improve efficiency in administration and boost predictability.
Mr Adedeji highlighted how purposefulness in leadership has helped Nigeria achieve a quick turnaround of an economy bogged down by a constrained fiscal space, low investor confidence and structural distortions before the current administration took office.
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“Tax reform is not always elegant at inception; it is technical, contested, and requires sustained alignment across institutions. It demands discipline, patience, and resilience,” Mr Adedeji said.
“Yet, through persistence and clarity of direction, what once appeared difficult has produced something coherent, structured, and of lasting national value.”
On that score, he acknowledged the efforts of Taiwo Oyedele, the man who led the Presidential Committee on Fiscal and Tax Reforms, now Nigeria’s junior minister for finance.
The NRS’ sixteen-floor office building is designed to accommodate around 3,000 staff.
