Nigeria’s tax collections have surged by 113 percent in less than three years, jumping from ₦12.3 trillion in 2023 to ₦27.1 trillion as of July 2026, according to an internal economic report by the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS). The revenue authority attributes this growth to key structural reforms implemented under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, including the digitisation of tax systems, the enactment of four new tax reform laws, internal operational overhauls, and executive orders designed to plug revenue leakages.
While initial reform measures triggered short-term macroeconomic distress, the NRS reports that Nigeria’s economy is steadily moving toward a more resilient foundation. The administration inherited four major economic bottlenecks: a fiscally unsustainable fuel subsidy, an opaque foreign exchange system, an underperforming oil sector, and a severely underutilized tax base. The gradual resolution of these issues has spurred improvements across multiple key economic indicators.
A significant driver of this recovery is the turnaround in the petroleum sector. Helped by the naira-for-crude arrangement with domestic refineries like the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Nigeria has transitioned from a heavy importer of petroleum products to a net exporter, a model Ghana is now looking to emulate. Domestic crude oil output has simultaneously risen from 1.2–1.3 million barrels per day in 2023 to 1.73 million barrels per day by July 2026, reaching 104 percent of the country's OPEC quota and strengthening public finances.
These structural shifts have yielded substantial gains across trade, fiscal health, and capital markets. Nigeria recorded a trade surplus of ₦7.55 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, compared to just ₦44.7 billion in 2023, while non-crude oil exports rose 51 percent year-on-year to ₦6.78 trillion. The balance of payments turned around from a $3.34 billion deficit to a $2.38 billion surplus in Q1 2026, and capital inflows surged to $10.37 billion in the same quarter, following $23.22 billion recorded in 2025. Additionally, external reserves reached a 17-year high of $51.9 billion, up from $3.99 billion in 2023.
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In the financial market, the market capitalization of the Nigerian Exchange expanded dramatically from ₦30.36 trillion in 2023 to ₦161 trillion in 2026, driven by banking recapitalization and growing domestic institutional investment. On the debt front, although total debt stock rose to ₦159.28 trillion in late 2025, the debt-to-GDP ratio dropped consistently from 38 percent in 2023 to 32.3 percent in 2026, marking the first sustained decline in over a decade, while the debt service-to-revenue ratio decreased from 68 percent to an IMF-projected 53 percent.
The economic adjustments have also begun translating into broader social and sector-specific impacts. As part of the response to fuel subsidy removal, over 100,000 vehicles have been converted to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), generating 10,000 jobs, attracting over $2 billion in investment, and cutting fuel costs for drivers by up to 60 percent. On the social front, the national minimum wage doubled between 2023 and 2026, and UNICEF estimates show the out-of-school children population decreased from 20 million to 18.3 million. In agriculture, federal budget allocations expanded from ₦228.4 billion in 2023 to ₦826.5 billion in 2025, supported by a ₦100 billion National Agricultural Development Fund aimed at stabilizing long-term food production. Although the NRS acknowledges that these gains follow painful adjustments, it emphasizes that sustained implementation of these policies will be essential to consolidating the country's economic recovery.
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