Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, Nigeria’s comptroller-general of Customs, told the Senate Committee on Finance on Monday that Import Duty Exemption Certificate approvals reached approximately N34 trillion in 2025, with roughly 60 per cent of that tied to military hardware procurement exempted from duty because of the country’s security challenges.

Adeniyi made the disclosure during an investigative hearing in Abuja involving revenue-generating government agencies, according to a report by Leadership Newspapers.

A policy with a decade-long footprint

The IDEC scheme, introduced in March 2020, has become one of the most significant drags on Customs revenue, Adeniyi said.

Beyond military procurement, the waivers extend to compressed natural gas (CNG) equipment, electric and hybrid vehicles, healthcare equipment and medical supplies, industrial machinery and manufacturing inputs, and food import intervention programmes.

Adeniyi pushed back on judging these exemptions purely by their revenue cost, arguing that many were designed around broader economic and social goals, lower consumer prices, expanded industrial output, and improved healthcare access, rather than short-term collections.

He recommended the Federal Government strengthen monitoring of waiver beneficiaries to confirm those outcomes are actually being delivered.

Revenue target under pressure

Adeniyi also disclosed that the Service had collected N4.5 trillion as of June 30, 2026, against an N11.04 trillion target for the year, leaving about N7 trillion still to be realised in the second half of the fiscal year.

A wider reckoning on unremitted funds

The same hearing surfaced separate allegations from the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) that Customs owes N8.9 billion in unremitted operating surplus to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, dating back to 2019, a claim the Service disputes.

A similar allegation was raised against the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), accused of owing N13.9 billion in unremitted surplus between 2023 and 2025; Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, the CAC’s Registrar-General, said the commission has been settling the obligation progressively.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sani Musa (Niger East) ordered the CAC, the FRC and the committee’s secretariat to reconcile their figures and report back within two weeks.

He also warned agencies that skipped the hearing, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, SMEDAN, the Industrial Training Fund, and the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, to appear at the next sitting or face sanctions under Senate rules.

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