Customs Revenue Rises 19% To N7.28trn In 2025

…Sets N11.07trn target for 2026

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated N7.281 trillion revenue in 2025, representing a 19 per cent increase over the N6.1 trillion collected in the previous year, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, has said.

Adeniyi disclosed this at a stakeholder engagement on the service’s Post-Clearance Audit (PCA) programme in Lagos, where he said the 2025 collection exceeded the N6.584 trillion target by N697 billion.

He said the revenue performance reflected the service’s efforts to strengthen compliance, improve trade facilitation and deploy modern customs control mechanisms.

According to him, the NCS has been given an even more ambitious revenue target of N11.074 trillion for 2026.

Adeniyi said the service had generated N4.30 trillion as of the end of June 2026, adding that the figure was reviewed by the Customs Board at its 65th regular meeting held the previous week.

He explained that achieving the N11.074 trillion target would require the service to move away from excessive physical intervention at ports and strengthen post-clearance controls.

“Numbers of that order cannot be delivered by opening more containers. They can only be delivered by knowing which of those containers that we must open,” he said.

The Customs boss said post-clearance audit would enable the service to verify declarations and compliance after goods had been released, thereby reducing unnecessary delays while protecting government revenue.

He noted that the approach was particularly important because physical examination was not the major cause of delays at Nigerian ports.

Citing the time-release study conducted at Tin Can Island Port, Lagos, Adeniyi said a container spent about five days in the port before exit, even though the actual physical examination took only a matter of hours.

He said 98.7 per cent of consignments recorded an average interval of nearly four days between booking for examination and physical exit.

According to him, the findings showed that the major delays were caused by manual processes, fragmented coordination among agencies and waiting time, rather than the Customs examination itself.

“The delay is in the architecture. It’s not in the inspection itself,” he said.

Adeniyi said the solution was therefore to reduce the number of consignments requiring physical intervention by conducting comprehensive verification after release.

He added that PCA was now a priority for the service because it would allow Customs to concentrate its resources on non-compliant traders while facilitating legitimate businesses with proven compliance records.

The Comptroller-General also disclosed that 247 companies had so far been admitted into the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme.

He said 15 of the participating companies had voluntarily disclosed irregularities, resulting in more than N1 billion in additional revenue.

Adeniyi said the average clearance time for the AEO companies had also fallen from about 156 hours before admission to 43 hours.

He singled out Huawei as an example of the benefits of compliance, saying the company had consistently recorded an average clearance time of only eight hours across the ports because of the quality of its documentation and compliance.

The 247 AEO companies, he said, generated more than N3 trillion in revenue in 2025, accounting for about 43 per cent of the N7.281 trillion collected by the service.

He said expanding the AEO programme would allow Customs to devote more resources to traders who were yet to comply with established requirements.

“If, for example, we are able to generate 80 per cent of our revenue from AEO companies, the rest 20 per cent means our resources will be concentrated on those few ones, and then we’ll be able to really open fire on them and begin to also move them to compliance,” Adeniyi said.

The Customs boss stressed that the reforms being implemented by the service were irreversible, noting that their success would depend on sustained stakeholder understanding and cooperation.

He said compliance should not be driven by fear of enforcement but by confidence in a system that is fair, predictable and consistently applied.

Adeniyi also encouraged eligible businesses to pursue AEO status, describing compliance as an advantage rather than a cost of doing business.

He said the Customs Service was working to move from a culture of intervention to one where compliance becomes the natural outcome of understanding, trust and cooperation.

According to him, the service’s success should not be measured only by revenue recovered through audits, but also by the number of businesses that comply voluntarily, the reduction in unnecessary interventions and increased confidence in the customs system.

He added that the NCS would continue stakeholder engagements in Lagos and other parts of the country to address concerns surrounding PCA, voluntary disclosure, appeals and other aspects of the reforms.

Adeniyi assured stakeholders that the service was prepared to review its processes where necessary and listen to concerns from the trading community.

He said the ultimate objective was to create a customs environment where the service and businesses could work together to improve compliance, competitiveness and national economic development.