KEY POINTS

• VAT collections rose 34 percent year-on-year to N6.4 trillion in nine months.
• Company Income Tax surged 48 percent to N7.72 trillion in the same period.
• Manufacturing led sectoral VAT contributions at 25.89 percent of total share.

Nigeria collected more in Value Added Tax and Company Income Tax during the first nine months of 2025 than the country has managed in the equivalent stretch of any recent year, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

VAT revenue climbed 34 percent year-on-year to N6.4 trillion between January and September 2025, up from N4.77 trillion in the same nine months of 2024. Company Income Tax did even better. CIT surged 48 percent to N7.72 trillion over the same period, compared with N5.22 trillion a year earlier. Together, the two taxes generated roughly N14.1 trillion in nine months, a figure that reflects something real shifting in how Nigeria raises money from its own economy.

The pattern has been broadly consistent across every quarterly update the NBS has published this year. Both taxes recorded year-on-year growth in every quarter of the nine-month window, even when the sequential momentum wobbled.

VAT actually dipped slightly in the second quarter, slipping 1.4 percent to N2.03 trillion from N2.06 trillion in the first quarter. It recovered firmly in Q3, rising 10.66 percent to N2.28 trillion. On a year-on-year basis, that Q3 figure was 28.1 percent higher than the same quarter in 2024.

Manufacturing Leads, Real Estate Stumbles

Within the VAT numbers, manufacturing was the clear engine. The sector emerged as the highest contributor to VAT revenue in Q3 2025, generating N290.79 billion during the quarter. Information and communication came in second at N210.78 billion, while mining and quarrying contributed N166.77 billion.

Sectoral growth rates told a more uneven story. Administrative and support service activities recorded the highest quarter-on-quarter growth at 89.28 percent. Arts, entertainment and recreation followed at 82.49 percent growth, while human health and social work expanded by 32.4 percent. Real estate moved in the opposite direction, posting a 51.33 percent quarterly contraction, the steepest sectoral decline in the period.

The breakdown of Q3 VAT by payment origin shows that domestic transactions drove the bulk of revenue. Local VAT payments stood at N1.12 trillion. Foreign VAT payments contributed N680.23 billion, while import VAT added N479.79 billion.

The Company Income Tax trajectory was steeper across the board. CIT stood at N1.98 trillion in Q1, jumped 40 percent to N2.78 trillion in Q2, and inched up a further 5.7 percent to N2.96 trillion in Q3. That final quarter figure was 67.19 percent higher than Q3 of 2024, a significant year-on-year gain by any measure.

Foreign Firms and the CIT Surprise in the VAT revenue 2025

One of the more interesting details inside the CIT data concerns the split between domestic and foreign tax payments. In Q3, domestic CIT stood at N1.21 trillion. Foreign CIT payments came in at N1.75 trillion, meaning foreign-sourced earnings actually outpaced local corporate contributions during the quarter.

That was partly a reversal of what happened in Q2. Earlier in the year, domestic firms had accounted for the bulk of the quarterly jump, with their CIT surging more than 250 percent between Q1 and Q2. Foreign companies’ contributions fell sharply over the same stretch. The Q3 swing back toward foreign contributions adds a layer of volatility that analysts will likely watch closely when the full-year data is published.

The broader context here is Nigeria’s ongoing push to reduce dependence on oil revenues. The country’s tax reform agenda, which included President Bola Tinubu signing four major tax reform bills into law in June 2025, has been aimed squarely at widening the non-oil tax base, improving compliance and digitizing collection infrastructure. The 2025 revenue data, at least through September, suggests those efforts are generating results at scale.

Under the current VAT sharing formula, states receive the largest slice at 50 percent, local governments get 35 percent and the federal government takes 15 percent, making the sustained VAT growth a meaningful boost to subnational finances as well, not just the federal budget.

Nigeria still leans heavily on crude oil for federal government receipts, and the non-oil tax base remains underdeveloped relative to peer economies of similar size. But the trajectory across VAT and CIT through the first three quarters of 2025 makes a credible case that the revenue mobilization story is moving in the right direction.