John Shiklam in Kaduna
The outgoing Executive Chairman of the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS), Mr. Jerry Adams, has disclosed that the state’s annual internally generated revenue (IGR) is trending towards N120 billion, with a monthly average collection of N10 billion.
Adams disclosed this on Thursday while speaking at the 160th meeting of the Joint Revenue Board in Kaduna.
He said the state’s IGR stood at N58 billion before 2023 and rose to N62 billion before reaching N71 billion in 2024.
According to him, in 2025, the state recorded an annual revenue of N85 billion, with an average monthly collection of N7 billion.
Adams said the figures were not a spike but “a trend that is steady and sustainable, with even stronger performance ahead as we deepen collaboration with MDAs, stakeholders, and with the full support of His Excellency, the Governor”.
He said Governor Uba Sani provided the political will that enabled KADIRS to increase IGR without interfering with its operations.
He recalled that “between 2019 and 2023, the highest annual collection this service ever recorded was N59 billion in 2022 at a monthly average of about N4.8 billion”.
He said: “On paper, that looked like progress. But if you looked closer, as we eventually did, you’d find out that a significant portion of that revenue didn’t come from organic tax growth.
“It came from back duty recoveries, sale of government properties and some other one off recoveries, not a growing, breathing tax base.
“By early 2023, that model had done exactly what such models always eventually do: it stalled. Vertical growth had become stunted, just as we feared it would.”
Adams said KADIRS subsequently decided that: “We could no longer keep squeezing the same familiar taxpayers a little harder each year and call it strategy.
“We needed to grow horizontally, not just vertically; to expand the tax net itself, rather than simply tighten it around those already caught in it, and to stop relying on windfalls to flatter our numbers.”
The outgoing KADIRS Chairman, who is Governor Sani Uba Sani’s running mate for the 2027 election, said the tax agency decided to fully digitise its processes to block leakages through the introduction of the PAYKADUNA portal, alongside Project C.R.A.F.T, Cross Sector Systems for Revenue Administration and Fiscal Transparency.
“This gave us, for the first time, a centralised payment system for all state revenue, closing gaps that informal, cash-based collection had long allowed to thrive,” he said.