The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Adewale Adeniyi, says import duty exemption approvals rose to ₦34 trillion in 2025, describing the policy as one of the major factors constraining the agency’s revenue generation.
Adeniyi made the disclosure on Monday during an investigative session of the Senate Committee on Finance with revenue-generating agencies in Abuja.
He said successive government fiscal policies have had both positive and negative effects on the revenue-generating capacity of the Customs Service.
“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 him, the Import Duty Exemption Certificate (IDEC) scheme, introduced in March 2020, recorded approvals valued at about ₦34 trillion in 2025. He said nearly 60 per cent of the approvals covered duty-free imports of military hardware in response to Nigeria’s security challenges.
Adeniyi said other government-backed duty 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 that the waivers reduced Customs revenue, he argued that fiscal policies should not be assessed solely on their impact on revenue generation but also on their wider economic and social benefits.
He called on 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.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Sani Musa, warned that the affected chief executives must appear at the committee’s next sitting or face sanctions in accordance with Senate rules.
