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Nigeria Customs Service

The Nigeria Customs Service has called on the National Assembly to carry out a comprehensive review of Nigeria’s import waiver and concession regime, questioning whether the incentives still justify their fiscal cost.

Comptroller-General Bashir Adeniyi made the appeal on Wednesday in Abuja during a two-day retreat for the Senate Committee on Customs themed “Legislative Oversight in the Context of Nigeria Customs Service Modernisation and Reforms.”

On the waiver regime, Adeniyi said a substantial volume of imports enters the country under government-approved concessions that now deserve legislative scrutiny. “Whether those concessions still serve the purposes for which they were created is a legislative question rather than a Customs one, and we would welcome your attention to it,” he said.

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The call follows revelations made last month that the value of Import Duty Exemption Certificate approvals rose to N34tn in 2025. “IDEC approvals reached about N34tn in 2025, 60 per cent of which was rightly granted by the government for military hardware procurement, which attracted duty exemptions because of Nigeria’s prevailing security challenges,” Adeniyi had told the Senate Committee on Finance.

He also urged lawmakers to conduct a post-implementation review of the Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023, noting that three years of operation had surfaced provisions that may need refinement. “A statute of that age is no longer a proposition; it is a record. There is now evidence of which provisions have worked as intended, which have proved harder to apply than the drafting anticipated, and which the pace of trade has already begun to overtake,” he said.

Adeniyi pushed back against judging Customs purely by revenue numbers, even as he disclosed that the Service generated N7.277tn in 2025, exceeding its annual target by 10.24 per cent, with N3.35tn collected between January and May 2026. He argued that exchange rate shifts could inflate figures artificially. “Revenue growth in a period of currency adjustment can flatter an administration that has done very little. What matters is whether the growth rests on better systems or on favourable arithmetic,” he said.

On modernisation, he described the deployment of the indigenous B’Odogwu customs platform and the Trade Modernisation Project as reforms designed to eliminate discretion from cargo clearance. “Every point at which an officer exercises personal judgement over a consignment is a point at which the outcome depends on that officer. Modernisation is the systematic reduction of those points,” he said.

He also warned that reform efforts frequently face resistance from interests threatened by automation, and urged the Senate to provide legislative protection. “Customs reform fails in most countries not for want of technical capacity but for want of political protection. Every modernisation reduces somebody’s discretion, and discretion is valuable to those who hold it,” he said.

Senate Committee on Customs Chairman, Senator Jibrin Isah, commended the agency for surpassing its 2025 revenue target of N6.5tn and pledged the National Assembly’s support. “Where you require legislative backing, please do not hesitate to call on us,” he said.

The Traffic NG
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Hibbatullah Shittu
The Traffic NG

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