Tax reform bills’ll increase revenue generation

Emmanuel Kehinde, Ilorin

Member of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Prof Muritala Awodun, has said that the tax reform bills would increase revenue generation by federating states and accelerate socio-economic development.

In an interview with journalists on Tuesday, he said the tax reform bills will stimulate the economy.

He said the bills should not be seen as what the committee wants to achieve but that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is trying to steer the ship of the nation back on track since, according to him, the previous administrations, including that of President Muhammad Buhari, drove the ship of the nation backward, rather than forward with their various economic policies, particularly the immediate past administration’s, which unfortunately is from the same political party.

He decried that from one administration to another in Nigeria, it has been problem upon problem, with this coming to its crescendo during the immediate past government.

He opined that the cumulative harm that these various administrations have done, is what this present administration is trying to fix, through various policy reforms, and the fiscal and tax reforms constitute a major step in this direction.

Awodun said: “Ours is a nation where the political drives the economic, and we have been very unfortunate to have very incompetent set of political leaders steering the ship of the nation, the result of these incompetent leadership is what we are all seeing, as this administration attempts to correct or fix some of the obvious problems resulting from the mistakes of past administrations.

“When the leadership of a nation makes policies that are not well thought out in terms of measuring the resultant impacts on the larger majority of the people, the people end up suffering based on the impact of such bad policies. The interests that matter most to our leaders are their own interests and that of their cronies as against the interests of the large majority.

“The only time you see the politicians concerned about the interests of the larger majority is when canvassing for their support (votes) and during that period that are ready to attend to some direct (short term) interests of the people by sharing monies and pretending to be listening to them. Once the elections are over, the people’s interests become secondary to our political leaders.”

Awodun, a former Dean, School of Business and Governance, Kwara State University, Malete, said the bills should not been seen as an attempt to relief responsibilities from some revenue generating agencies of the Federal Government such as the Customs, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and to be handled by a central revenue agency of the federal government.

He also said there is no intention to indirectly cripple the operations of these agencies.

He said: “This is nothing for any form of contention other than the fact that agencies given responsibilities to render certain government services to the people have turned themselves to revenue generating agencies at the detriment of their original responsibilities, and this cannot continue. Using the present arrangement encourages huge leakages and loss of government revenues in unimaginable amounts, so if reforms of taxes and revenue must happen; it must be total.

“We are quick to want to compare ourselves to foreign countries in areas that suits us like asking for democratic governance, but the same people are not willing to have an efficient governance system as we have in these countries where government services are top notch and efficiency and excellence are of topmost priority. How then do we get accelerated development?

“This thing called development doesn’t just happen, you have to be intentional about it and purposeful in driving the nation towards it.

“We have been driven backwards rather than forward, particularly in the last 10 to 12 years as a nation. People who have been given the opportunity of rulership not leadership of this country called Nigeria in the last 10 to 12 years in particular have ruined this country. I have had some interviews in the past raising issues about the incessant borrowings of the last administration in particular that those borrowings for consumption will jeopardize our future and where they claim they were for infrastructure those infrastructure were largely inflated in terms of costs and not even completed or in most cases with insignificant impact.

“Going back to your question, every agency of government that are originally service providers have turned themselves into revenue providers paying more attention to collecting money from people than providing services to people. Their primary responsibilities are jeopardized by their revenue chasing efforts just because they want to have direct contact and control of funds to support their exploitation of the system.

“Nobody is saying that their activities should be taken over by any other agency but their revenue collection system should be integrated to that of the revenue agency for proper and seamless accountability and reporting. We did this successfully at the sub national level in some states in this country, as I spearheaded it in Kwara State Internal Revenue Service between 2015 and 2019 when there was a paradigm shift in revenue administration in the state. Several other states in Nigeria have also been bold enough to do the same while the majority of the sub nationals are lagging behind preferring the unintegrated arrangement that is obviously sub optimal.”