Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abbas Tajudeen, has warned that Nigeria’s sharply expanded federal budget — with projections that exceed ₦50 trillion and total 2026 appropriation passed at ₦68.3 trillion — can only be delivered if the newly inaugurated Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) sustains and deepens its recent performance. Speaking at the commissioning of the 16-storey NRS headquarters in Abuja, the Speaker argued that revenue administration must be governed by consistency, visibility and restraint, warning that “overreach may produce immediate gains, but it weakens trust and compliance over time.” His remarks land against the backdrop of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2025 Tax Reform Acts, a fully operational new tax code, record collections topping ₦28 trillion in 2025, and a 411% jump in monthly revenues since mid-2023 — gains that still sit alongside a structural gap between what Nigeria spends and what it earns.
Key Overview
- Nigeria’s 2026 federal budget finally passed at ₦68.323 trillion, up from the ₦58.47 trillion initially proposed.
- Speaker Abbas says national budget projections exceed ₦50 trillion, with rising commitments to infrastructure, security, education and social services.
- NRS collections exceeded target in 2025, reaching over ₦28 trillion, driven by non-oil revenues.
- Monthly revenue rose from ₦711 billion in May 2023 to ₦3.635 trillion in September 2025 — a 411% increase.
- President Tinubu signed four Tax Reform Acts on 26 June 2025; they took effect 1 January 2026.
- NRS replaces the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) as Nigeria’s sole federal revenue collector.
- Adedeji: petrol subsidy at $120/barrel oil would have consumed 56–76% of the ₦68 trillion 2026 budget.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abbas Tajudeen, on Tuesday affirmed that Nigeria’s budget has expanded significantly, with projections exceeding ₦50 trillion and rising commitments to infrastructure, security, education, and social services.
Giving his goodwill message at the inauguration of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) in Abuja, the Speaker highlighted some economic reforms carried out by the current administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, especially relating to revenue generation and taxation.
While noting that Nigeria can bridge the gap between the national budget and expenditure with sustained revenue generation, Speaker Tajudeen argued that bridging that gap through sustainable revenue is central to fiscal stability, according to The Nation.
Speaker Tajudeen pointed out that the challenge now is to sustain and deepen the NRS’ performance.
He said: “This is particularly important when considering the scale of national expenditure. Nigeria’s budget has expanded significantly, with projections exceeding ₦50 trillion and rising commitments to infrastructure, security, education, and social services.
“The gap between what the nation seeks to achieve and what it currently earns remains substantial. Bridging that gap through sustainable revenue is central to fiscal stability.
“The question, therefore, is not whether revenue must increase; it is how it increases.”
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The three pillars: consistency, visibility and restraint
The Speaker observed that “three issues will determine that outcome. The first is consistency. Revenue administration loses credibility when outcomes depend on discretion rather than rules. The NRS must demonstrate that its processes are stable across sectors, regions, and categories of taxpayers.
“The second is visibility. A modern tax system cannot operate as a closed structure. Data, processes, and decisions must be intelligible, not only to government but to those who are subject to it. This is central to compliance.
“The third is restraint. The authority to collect revenue must be exercised with discipline. Overreach may produce immediate gains, but it weakens trust and compliance over time. These are not operational preferences. They are institutional requirements.”
Speaker Tajudeen said the emergence of the NRS, formerly the Federal Inland Revenue Service, must be understood within that context. “It is not only a renamed institution; it is a repositioned one, with a broader mandate and higher expectations.”
The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Abbas separately warning that Nigeria’s widening revenue gap could undermine the country’s ambitious fiscal plans, including the implementation of the 2026 budget — stressing that bridging it “requires deliberate and coordinated reforms rather than short-term measures.”
Record collections — and the case for sustaining them
The Speaker noted that the performance of the NRS recently has been notable. “In 2025, collections exceeded target, reaching over ₦28 trillion, with significant growth driven by non-oil revenues,” he said, adding that “this reflects not only improved systems but also a shift towards voluntary compliance and better coordination.”
That figure is supported by separate disclosures from NRS Executive Chairman Dr Zacch Adedeji, who told the same commissioning audience that revenue collection had risen from ₦6.8 trillion five years ago to ₦28.7 trillion in 2025, attributing the growth to structural reforms and improved compliance. Adedeji added that the administration had streamlined over 60 fragmented tax laws into a single, more coherent framework, according to The Nation’s coverage of the event.
Nigerian Eye’s reporting captured the monthly-revenue dimension starkly. Collections rose from ₦711 billion in May 2023 to ₦3.63 trillion in September 2025 — a 411 percent increase — a trajectory Adedeji attributed to subsidy removal, improved remittance systems, digital enforcement and tighter coordination of non-tax revenues across government agencies.
Why the context matters: a ₦68.3 trillion 2026 budget
Speaker Tajudeen’s reference to projections “exceeding ₦50 trillion” understates the final figure: the 2026 Appropriation Bill was ultimately passed at ₦68.323 trillion at third reading, after the National Assembly adopted a ₦9.09 trillion upward revision from the ₦58.47 trillion President Tinubu originally proposed in December 2025.
That original ₦58.18 trillion framework — which Tinubu presented on 19 December 2025 under the theme “Budget of Consolidation, Renewed Resilience and Shared Prosperity” — already projected total expenditure of ₦58.18 trillion and expected revenue of ₦34.33 trillion, with capital expenditure of ₦26.08 trillion and recurrent non-debt expenditure of ₦15.25 trillion. The Medium-Term Expenditure Framework underpinning it was anchored on a US$64.85 per-barrel oil benchmark, crude oil production of 1.84 million barrels per day, and an exchange rate assumption of ₦1,400 to the US dollar.
Tinubu then asked the Senate to increase the package by ₦9.3 trillion to accommodate legacy commitments in the transportation and health sectors and additional provisions for the judiciary. As Premium Times reported via AllAfrica, “lawmakers did not question the president’s request for additional funds” during deliberations.
A breakdown by Standard Times puts the final allocations at ₦4.79 trillion for statutory transfers, ₦15.4 trillion for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, ₦32.2 trillion for capital projects, and ₦15.8 trillion for debt servicing. The Independent noted a Senate-endorsed $10 per barrel increase in the oil benchmark, projected to generate an additional ₦2.59 trillion, and flagged that as much as 70% of 2025 capital projects had to be rolled over into 2026 due to weak revenue performance.
Tinubu himself had used his budget speech to warn that Nigeria would be terminating “the habit of running three budgets in one inflow,” pledging that from April 2026, the country would operate on a single budget backed by a single revenue cycle — “no overlaps, no excuses, no rollovers.”
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The 2025 Tax Reform Acts: the legislative spine
What has changed under the Tinubu administration, the Speaker stated, is not only the policy direction but also the underlying logic of the system.
He said: “The reforms have sought to align rules, institutions, and incentives within a single framework. The 2025 Tax Reform Acts represent that shift in its clearest form. They reorganised the architecture within which revenue is generated, assessed, and enforced, and provided the basis for a more integrated system.”
President Tinubu signed the four tax bills into law on 26 June 2025, with the package comprising the Nigeria Tax Act (NTA), the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act, according to PwC’s authoritative summary. The commencement date was set for 1 January 2026.
EY’s technical alert notes that the NTA repeals and consolidates major tax legislation including the Companies Income Tax Act, Personal Income Tax Act, Petroleum Profits Tax Act, Value Added Tax Act, Capital Gains Tax Act and Stamp Duties Act — replacing them with a unified, modernised regime applicable to both resident and nonresident taxpayers.
Headline changes highlighted across professional advisory notes include:
- Small companies (annual turnover ≤ ₦100 million, fixed assets ≤ ₦250 million) now fully exempt from Companies Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax and the new Development Levy, per Baker Tilly Nigeria.
- A new 4% Development Levy that consolidates five previously separate levies — Tertiary Education Tax, NITDA, NASENI, Police Trust Fund, and the Student Loans levy — into a single instrument, according to Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie’s tax update.
- VAT retained at 7.5%, with expanded zero-rating of basic food items, medicines, educational books, electricity generation and transmission services.
- Mandatory FIRS-sanctioned e-invoicing for all VAT-registered businesses — making Nigeria an early adopter of e-invoicing in Africa.
- A Tax Ombuds office to serve as independent arbiter on complaints.
- Personal income earnings of up to ₦800,000 per year are fully exempt from tax, per Africa Check’s factsheet, protecting minimum-wage workers.
Africa Check also traces the origin of the reforms back to 2023, when Tinubu set up a Presidential Committee on Tax Reforms chaired by PwC tax expert Taiwo Oyedele, with the committee targeting a tax-to-GDP ratio of at least 18%.
Subsidy removal and the fiscal headroom it bought
The Speaker’s call for restraint in revenue collection is inseparable from a second pillar of Tinubu’s reform programme: the removal of the petrol subsidy.
Adedeji told the same NRS commissioning audience that at an oil price benchmark of $120 per barrel, Nigeria’s annual subsidy bill could have risen to between ₦38 trillion and ₦52 trillion — consuming as much as 56 to 76 percent of the country’s ₦68 trillion 2026 budget. He said eliminating the subsidy has freed up fiscal space, improved external reserves, and helped stabilise the country’s debt service outlook.
External reserves — which Tinubu said had risen to a seven-year high of about US$47 billion — have become one of the most visible metrics of fiscal improvement, alongside inflation moderation from 24.23% in March 2025 to 14.45% in November 2025.
The public-facing bargain
To the Nigerian public, Speaker Tajudeen, who noted that it is important to address the concerns that have accompanied the reform, argued that “taxation is not an abstract concept. It affects daily life, enterprise, and opportunity. The intention of this new regime is not to increase hardship, but to improve structure. It seeks to broaden the base, reduce leakages, and ensure that obligations are more evenly distributed. It is also designed to protect those at the lower end of the income scale while improving collection efficiency in areas where compliance has historically been weak.”
That framing aligns with Minister of State for Finance Taiwo Oyedele’s own remarks at the commissioning, in which he said the transition to the NRS signals a shift towards a more integrated and technology-driven revenue administration, replacing a system that previously suffered from fragmented tax laws, weak coordination and a low tax-to-GDP ratio.
It also echoes President Tinubu’s own framing at the same event, where he declared that the old tax laws had “made Nigerians poor” while the new systems would usher in opportunities and prosperity. The President urged Adedeji to ensure the institution upholds the highest standards and “must not only collect revenue, but it must also build trust, ensure fairness, and demonstrate that government can be accountable, efficient, and responsible.”
What happens next: oversight, technology, and the tax-base expansion
While noting that the role of the National Assembly does not end with the passage of laws, as it extends to observing how those laws function in practice, the Speaker declared that the House will continue to engage the NRS through oversight, ensuring that the intent of reform is preserved in implementation.
“We are also conscious that the effectiveness of the Service will depend on its interaction with broader economic systems. The integration of technology, the expansion of the tax base, and coordination across agencies will require continued legislative attention and support,” he said.
Under the new legal architecture, the NRS is expected to act as an autonomous revenue collection agency responsible for collecting revenues of other agencies such as the Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, and Nigeria Ports Authority, according to Daily Trust’s explainer. A new Joint Revenue Board provides the governance spine for federal-state-local coordination, intended to address the long-standing problem of multiple and overlapping tax regimes.
Punch reported that the 16-storey NRS headquarters itself — built by China Civil Engineering and Construction Company and delivered in 30 months after a foundation laid more than two decades earlier — accommodates around 3,000 staff alongside a data processing centre, clinic, auditorium, training rooms, a gym and a library. It is being publicly framed as the physical embodiment of the fiscal reset.
A relationship, not just a revenue target
Speaker Tajudeen concluded by stating that a revenue system is ultimately a relationship between the state and its citizens, as it reflects what is demanded, how it is enforced, and what is delivered in return. He added that the headquarters, in its permanence, “suggests a system that intends to endure.”
The Speaker stressed, “Endurance, however, will depend less on the structure we commission today and more on the discipline that guides its operation.”
For a country whose 2026 budget now sits at more than ₦68 trillion, whose debt-service line alone consumes nearly ₦16 trillion, and whose 2025 budget execution still left 70% of capital projects rolled over into the new fiscal year, that discipline is not an aspirational virtue. It is the price of closing the gap between what Nigeria promises and what it can actually pay for.
The early data points — a jump from ₦6.8 trillion to ₦28.7 trillion in annual revenues over five years, monthly collections up more than four-fold, and a legislated move to a unified tax code with e-invoicing built into the plumbing — suggest Nigeria’s fiscal architecture is, on paper, better wired than it has been in a generation. Whether that translates into the structural answer to the country’s chronic revenue-expenditure gap will depend, as Speaker Abbas argued, on three old virtues that cannot be delivered by statute alone: consistency, visibility, and restraint.
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