The Concourse
By Soney Antai, a serial award winning columnist
Tinubu’s taxes and Nigeria’s masses
Honesty compels this columnist to concede that taxes are part of the financial contributions that businesses and citizens offer to governments for the growth and development of their state and nation. Whether as personal, corporate, petroleum, property, value added, and entertainment, among others, having been around for centuries now, taxes have become global citizens.
However, many taxable adults in Nigeria do not like to pay taxes, even as there’s little accountability in their management by those in power. Shamefully, until June 2011 when then President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a the Personal Income Tax (Amendment) Act, the nation’s presidents, governors and their deputies, as well as ministers and other top political office holders never paid personal income tax. The payment burden was on the poor, civil servants, and the other ordinary Nigerians.
Even as things are now, the political, religious, and business high ups hardly pay personal income tax. Their failure in this gave birth to the demand for three-year tax clearance as a precondition for running for elective offices or accessing some government business deals. Even then, the powerful and ‘resource-full’ generally under-declare their incomes so as to pay less taxes. Beyond that, they scarcely pay corporate or property taxes. Most of these folks use proxies to purchase properties around the globe to launder their loots. They also set up offshore letterbox companies to hide their loots as well; yet they are amongst the faces that run things in our political and economic space. Because they control things, they are not facing the kind of deprivation and socio-economic exclusion that most of their fellow countrymen and women face.
It is safe to state that if you ask an honest, hard-working average Nigerian what they consider as President Bola Tinubu’s contribution to the uplift of the Nigerian masses, they would find it tough to find a ready answer. But if you are to ask them how life has been with them since he came to power, they would readily reel out the socio-economic pains he has brought on them. Why has this been the case? The answer from my layman’s perspective lies in the “removal of fuel subsidy,” which many believe has been a hoax ab ovo, and the floating of the naira. With the sheriff’s imperial declaration, “fuel subsidy is gone,” came the demolition of the little hope the Buhari mal-administration left them. As if Tinubu was bent on driving the nation’s economy underground, he launched what critics would most likely characterise as ‘naira value stripping policy,” which has left the national currency in a state of coma. After these came a flurry of taxes by way of hike in electricity tariffs, bank electronic transfers, and an increase in school fees, among others. But the man is unrelenting in this scorched pocket policy he has unleased on the poor of his country.
By the new taxocratic regime that he calls tax reforms, virtually everyone is required to have a Tax Identification Number (TIN) to be able to transact any business starting from 1st January 2026. Curiously, his government loses sight of the fact that it takes productivity to earn money from where one would pay taxes. He has not painstakingly asked how favourable to business the business environment in the country is; or, how much is the manufacturing sector in the country worth; or how do people who generate energy from their own personal generating sets, provide their own water, take responsibility for fixing some of their roads, earn enough money to be able to pay taxes?
Amid all this, the president, on 26 June 2025, signed into effect Nigeria Tax Administration Act, one of four tax reform bills he assented to on that day. This law emplaces a five per cent surcharge on petrol and diesel sales. In other words, Nigerians will pay more for these products, which would further raise the prices of goods and services and dip the standard of living of the hapless masses. Businesses, many of which have already shut shops, would be severely stressed. So, what’s the essence of having a government that is hugely agile in imposing taxes but damned dwarfish in improving the lives of its people? What sense to the suffering masses is the president’s boastful offerings when playing host to the Buhari Organisation that, “Today I can stand here before you to brag. Nigeria is not borrowing. We have met our revenue target for the year, and we met it in August.” So it is about depriving Toyin to pay Tosin! Nigeria, not borrowing? That’s obviously ambrosiac to only the marines!
There are so many untapped solid minerals in the country. For instance, we read in the media that there is abundant gold being mined illegally by private people in Zamfara State. Why is the government turning a blind eye to that when it could take full control of the resource, set up a processing facility as the young but awesomely resourceful and patriotic Ibrahim Toure is doing in Burkina Faso? So much money is being lost to criminally carved crevices in the government’s financial management infrastructure, but why is the government not plugging those? Most politicians and big businesses have multiple properties around the country, but are they paying property taxes?Why is the manufacturing sector left to stumble, bumble, and bungle? Why is the government in love with wasteful spending on itself? It takes a little empathy and compassion from our overlords with this manor-fief mindset to stop the petroleum tax and this TIN stuff for everyone but the privileged few.