Nigeria not Insolvent, only Facing Revenue Leakages – Oyedele

The Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, has said Nigeria is not broke but facing the consequences of revenue leakages.

Fielding questions from journalists at the opening of the 1st National Revenue Assurance Summit organised for all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), he said: “I would not say Nigeria is broke, I will say we have revenue leakages.”

He continued: “How do you ensure that the revenue you have is getting to the government and how are you sure the government is using it efficiently for the people and that is the conversation that goes beyond tax, we have government assets, government enterprises, we have natural resources which is beyond oil and gas to solid minerals.

“So, our efforts now is to see how we harmonise all of that and optimise the revenue that we have. The number we have gives us the optimism that we can ramp up our revenue significantly from tax by protecting vulnerable people.

“Those who have been paying are mostly the poorest, so to protect these people, give them exemption and then allow those who can pay to start paying and that is where the money will come from and it is in our enlightened self-interest for the elite and the upper middle class to pay taxes, because when they pay they will not have to incur implicit taxes of running their own local government in their own houses which is more expensive.”

He emphasised the need for reliable data collection to enable all tiers of government to ramp up revenue.

“We are no longer at a point where we will be celebrating revenue for this year as raised from 12 per cent over last year, we can’t start from a low base and be celebrating incremental progress, we need a leap, we need transformation,” he said.

He noted that government at all levels must get its priorities right and emphasise transparency and accountability in public spending.

“So, we are working on those frameworks and we are getting the support. Once we agree as a people to fix a problem, there is no problem that is beyond us, we can solve this problem and progressively Nigerians will see the improvement in governance and by extension the quality of their livelihood and well being.

“We don’t want to get to a point where we are doing enforcement by begging people to tell us what they can pay, we want to get the data and tell them. So, when we get the data, we are not going to physically collect taxes.

“You will find that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will pay your taxes once we decide that you will pay and we are doing that but, first, ensuring that those who are too poor and small businesses are not burdened with taxes is key,” Oyedele added.