Nigerian Breweries hosted a delegation led by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria’s Director General, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, at its corporate head office this week, with talks centred on the fiscal pressures reshaping Nigeria’s brewing industry. Nigerian Breweries said in a statement that “strategic partnerships are essential to unlocking the full potential of Nigeria’s brewing industry.”
The timing aligns with a new excise schedule that took effect on 1 July 2026, raising the specific rate on beer and stout to N72 per litre and pushing spirits to a 30 per cent ad valorem rate plus N75 per litre, with further increases scheduled through 2028. Brewers have already tested this argument with government once this year. Nigerian Breweries, Guinness Nigeria and International Breweries joined the Beer Sectoral Group in a meeting with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, flagging concerns over the ad valorem structure, tax stamps and traceability rules built into the new framework, an engagement that yielded assurances on predictability rather than relief on the rates themselves.
Ajayi-Kadir has pressed a parallel case across manufacturing this year, publicly objecting to World Bank calls for reopened fuel import licences and demanding a more transparent Naira-for-crude allocation to local refiners. Ajayi-Kadir’s position treats import liberalisation and unpredictable fiscal policy as two sides of the same cost problem, one manufacturers, brewers included, end up absorbing.
Nigerian Breweries has been working the operational side of that same problem too, investing in its talent pipeline through a technical skills programme aimed at production floor capacity. The head office meeting also lands days after MAN opened separate ICBA Africa talks on a formal cooperation framework covering the non-alcoholic sector, suggesting the association is consolidating its bargaining position across drinks categories rather than negotiating brewery by brewery. Whether that adds up to revised excise terms, or just a more coordinated venue for the same complaints, depends on what follows in the coming months.
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