The indigestible tax bill

As we drove out of Abuja on Thursday last week to attend a wedding in Kano, I thought I had left behind the controversy that had bedevilled the omnibus tax bill presented by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the National Assembly for quick passage. It was a crisp Harmattan afternoon with vehicles of all shapes and types massing on the highway.

I took my usual route to Bwari through Dutsen Alhaji to join the major Kaduna highway at Jere. I had anticipated the road from Jere to be as bad as I left it a few months ago but I was pleasantly surprised that the minister of Works kept his words for once. Much of the rough portion before Katari village that had caused deep concern for commuters has now been patched up.

I could see that the road patching exercise had gone a long way, making it now possible to trudge along to Kaduna without much headache. As we drove along, I realised that the controversial tax bill was still troubling and fouling the atmosphere. The FM stations beaming from the car radio mostly discussed the contentious bill. And when my attention went to my phone, I found that most of the posts trending were on the tax bill. It seemed for once that there was a total mobilisation on the tax bill.

There was a beautiful song in the Hausa language trending which seems to encapsulate the widespread feelings against the bill. The refrain in the song, A fada musu mu bama so, Magana ta harajin zamba (Tell them we don’t want, this talk of tax scam) is a reminiscence of the one in the song against President Obasanjo’s third term bill of 2006.

The trend in the mobilisation against the tax bill is ominous to its successful sailing through the National Assembly. I am amazed that a bill that had been so long in the works should be facing so much criticism. It was expected that President Tinubu would tinker with the tax laws as a reforming agent to build up funds for all levels of government in the country, as he famously did when he was the governor of Lagos State.

president didn’t disappoint when in August 2023, he inaugurated a large committee to be chaired by Taiwo Oyedele, a highly accomplished professional with extensive expertise in fiscal policy, taxation and economic matters. As the committee was to reform tax matters as well as fiscal policy its composition cut across the strata of expertise in the country.

However, as someone pointedly told me the actual composition was more or less a Lagos people affair. Since then, I had nursed a lingering foreboding that the outcome would be contentious.

The committee got to work in earnest and submitted reports to the presidents at intervals. However, the reports were never made public until the omnibus bill landed at the doors of the National Assembly for quick passage.

The National Economic Council comprising all 36 governors and headed by none other but the vice-president had scrutinised the bill, noted its deficiencies, and asked the president to withdraw it from the National Assembly for more consultations, but they were rebuffed.

The bills would have had a quick passage in the National Assembly had it not been courageously stopped by Senator Ali Ndume.

When we got out of Kaduna, the road to Kano was more comfortable which enabled me to return to my WhatsApp group. A particular post trending from the Centre for Democratic Development Research and Training, Zaria, caught my attention. It is a 53-page write-up capturing the economic and political implications of the bill written by Professors Abubakar Siddique Mohammed and Aliyu Rafindadi Sanusi. I made a thorough reading of the tract and was well-educated. I recommend it to all my readers.

There was also a posting relating to Professor Ode Ojowu trending. Ode Ojowu is not the garrulous type and anything from him was worth reading. And to confess, he was my teacher and we were the first students he taught after making the historic first class in economics in ABU Zaria in 1974. I recall that he used to come to the lecture room in the NYSC gear to teach. Despite the fact he was serving in the NYSC, we regarded him as one of the best tutors we ever had. His take on the tax bill is profound and worth noting.

While at Kano, I found that the tax bill was the subject of discussions across the society. Everyone had his take on the subject. And it was one hard knock after the other on the tax bill. I found a grand summary of it all when I attended the Juma’at prayer at the Alfurqan mosque. The Khutbah was entirely on the tax bill and why it should be withdrawn. I found that the Chief Imam, Dr Bashir Aliyu Umar, who delivered the Khutbah was at home with the subject matter and he made a fantastic delivery on it entirely in Hausa. It was only after, when I enquired, I learnt that he is one of the country’s highly rated economists.

In all my engagements on the tax bill, I found that for a subject matter of that importance, nil effort was made to engage with stakeholders. From my perspective, the bill should be withdrawn to enable more consultations.