Zacch Adedeji: The Architect of Nigeria’s Revenue Revolution - THISDAYLIVE

Power in Nigeria rarely announc Some public officials chase headlines. Not Zacch Adedeji. What that man does is build spreadsheets, somehow turning them into blueprints for revenue revolution.

Since President Bola Tinubu appointed him Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service in September 2023, Adedeji has spent his tenure trying to get the country to actually collect the money it’s owed. 

A first-class Accounting graduate from Obafemi Awolowo University, he went on to earn a master’s in Accounting and a PhD in Public Sector Finance, picking up fellowships along the way from both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and the Chartered Institute of Taxation. Before Abuja, he’d already worked at Procter & Gamble, served as Commissioner for Finance in Oyo State, and run the National Sugar Development Council.

That mix of corporate and government experience shows up in how he’s approached the job. Rather than simply raising tax rates, Adedeji leaned into a “no new taxes” strategy, widening the tax net, reorganising the agency around taxpayer categories instead of tax types, and rolling out systems like TaxPro-Max and the National Single Window for port trade.

The legislative side moved just as fast. Under his watch, Nigeria passed the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, and the law that eventually turned FIRS into the Nigeria Revenue Service, a rebrand meant to centralise both tax and non-tax collection under one roof instead of scattering it across dozens of agencies.

The numbers, on paper, back up the noise. Collections hit N21.7 trillion in 2024, beating the target, then jumped to N28.3 trillion in 2025. The 2026 goal now sits at N40.71 trillion. Monthly federation allocations climbed from around N711 billion in May 2023 to over N3.6 trillion by late 2025.

Whether Adedeji’s reforms outlast his time in office is the real question hanging over all this. Nigeria has a habit of building institutions around individuals rather than systems, and the taxman himself seems aware of it. Which might explain why he frames his work less as a personal legacy and more as an attempt to build something that keeps running long after he’s gone.

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