By Jack Okude
When a nation’s economy is tanking such that it prints cash to meet governance cost, what can the tax chief do to help reflate that economy? This was the challenge before Zacch Adedeji, the Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), formerly the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
That also was the economy that President Bola Tinubu inherited. A belly-up economy, anaemic, punctured by debt, low productivity, galloping inflation and dwindling investor confidence.
Under such circumstance, the tax office should ensure it plugs leakages to collect more taxes and ramp up revenue. It achieves this through transformative leadership, tech-driven tax management scheme that is robust enough to connect the dots between technology and the people.
The tax office also engages in advocacy and public enlightenment to convince the public that when they pay tax, they also pay themselves because the tax they pay is used to provide them with healthcare, good roads and general infrastructure among other amenities. One other duty of the chief tax officer is that he steels himself to rally the public to trust the tax process by ensuring transparency in tax administration. Since September 2023 when President Tinubu appointed him, Adedeji, who flaunts a first-class degree in management and accounting, has clinically aggregated these key duties into a performance module that has seen him triumph where his predecessors stumbled.
The result is a telling improvement in the efficiency of the nation’s tax administration ecosystem. Adedeji stands at the epicentre of Nigeria’s tax history. Under his watch, Nigeria experienced the most profoundly comprehensive tax re-engineering leading to the overhaul of tax administration. By January 1, 2026, the nation’s tax system was consolidated into four new tax laws repealing over a dozen legacy tax laws. It’s a journey to transition the nation’s tax administration into a smarter, tech-enabled framework that promotes openness, efficiency and above all, that helps to build public trust in public finance management.
On this score, rather than continue with the old order of multiple tax schemes and muddled governance structure, the nation now has the Nigeria Tax Act, Nigeria Tax Administration Act, Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act. All driven in a pulley-like integrated system. This sits well with Adedeji’s vision of innovative tax administration anchored on transparency and driven by technology.
Right from 2023, Adedeji showed he’s a ready man. Not a rookie; neither a novice. He’s the nerd who is not just woke, but alive to his duties. Easily ranked as one of the best appointments of President Tinubu, Adedeji has demonstrated a clear understanding of his duties as the chief taxman in a strained economy. His primary duty is to ensure that previously embedded leakages are blocked and safety valves built into the system. And he has achieved this over time. The balance sheet shows a progression in tax revenue in recent years but the real spike happened under Adedeji.
In 2021, ₦6.405 trillion was collected in tax bettering the ₦6.401 trillion target set for that fiscal year. It ratcheted to ₦10.1 trillion in 2022. However, the rhythm began to change in pleasant tunes in 2023 when ₦12.3 trillion was raked in as tax revenue. By 2024 when Adedeji had settled down and taken charge, stamping his imprints of transformative leadership, the tax haul jumped to ₦18.5 trillion by the end of September, a figure that exceeded the ₦19.4 trillion target for that year. This is a bold expression of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope and it speaks to the diligence and effective deployment of critical technology to drive the revenue collection processes.
By 2025, the engine has rumbled to a higher rev with a whopping ₦22.59 trillion collected within nine months, from January to September of that year. The agency had projected to collect ₦25.2 trillion for the full year, but it got more, a record ₦28.3 trillion in total tax revenue collection. The 2025 tax revenue obviously worked up the nerve of Adedeji and his troop to aim higher. This time, the NRS has set an ambitious target of ₦40.7 trillion revenue for 2026.
Recently, while appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations alongside members of President Tinubu’s economic team, Adedeji attributed the tax revenue leap to sweeping tax reforms which transferred petroleum royalties and other mineral revenues to the agency.
He said that non-oil taxes generated ₦21.46 trillion, exceeding projections by ₦3.4 trillion.
He projected that NRS will hit ₦32.14 trillion in revenue for 2026, ₦3.85 trillion higher than the actual 2025 collection. An ambition buoyed by anticipated growth in oil production from 1.7 million barrels per day in 2025 to 1.8 million barrels per day in 2026, alongside other gains from ongoing tax reforms.
A trove of tech reforms under his watch has brought flexibility to service delivery. This include the national e-invoicing solution, a real-time electronic invoicing system for large tax-payers to enhance transparency, seamlessness and block revenue leakages; introduction of the 829# USSD initiative, a mobile USSD code for taxpayers to easily retrieve TINs and verify Tax Clearance Certificates; as well as the upgrade of the TaxPro-Max platform to automate over 80% of manual processes. This largely removed human intrusion into the tax-collection process, and ipso facto, reduced elements of corruption in the system.
He also, among other reforms, introduced the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACTU) in collaboration with the ICPC to eliminate corrupt practices and enhance integrity within the service delivery system.
Over all, Adedeji has from day one focused on improved service delivery, welfare of staffers and injection of modern technology in tax administration. A clear outlier, he intentionally jettisoned the warts and cracks that stymied service delivery in the old era. Using the same set of staffers, he out-performed his predecessors on all fronts. This is no magic. It’s called intentional leadership. A good management is one that is able to galvanise human capital, funds and technology to achieve set goals. This is exactly what Adedeji is doing at NRS; upskilling staffers on a continuous basis, ensuring they are effectively tooled to enable them conform to global best practices and good corporate governance.
Surely, he understands the vision of his boss, President Tinubu, to grow the nation’s economy to a $1 trillion mark by 2030. And he’s working the anvil to help make this ambitious vision happen. He’s the real McCoy among the President’s economic foot-soldiers in a season of strategic economic re-engineering.
· Okude, a public policy analyst, writes from Abuja