Today is a journey into political economy. The proposal on a term tenure of six years is gradually becoming a document of reality. We will all be witnesses to six years of happiness or hardship and underdevelopment. Like many coup-detesting Nigerians, I have always looked forward to the end of a four-year tenure of a bad regime with optimism that freedom is in sight. But more practically, we often find the first term of many governors, in particular, more productive than the second term when they know nothing is at stake, except the ambitious ones that want to move to the national level.
Even at that, we have observed that governors who have the ambition to move to the Senate concentrate efforts on making the senatorial district citizens happy, forgetting that they were elected over a whole state. Many Nigerian politicians are not concerned about their party’s success but how they can use the party to fulfil personal ambition. This is why it is relatively easy for them to switch from one political party to another, despite the insurmountable ideological divide.
Many states gained some level of development because there exists a second term for the governor, who would attempt to execute some legacy projects to prepare the ground for winning a second term. The second term usually shows the true colour of these governors. It can be argued that there are situations where a woeful first term may not prevent the governor’s second term. The case of Governor Lucky Igbinedion of Edo State, as an example, comes to mind in this instance. The woeful performance in the first term showed clearly that the governor was going to lose the second chance, but the wise intervention of his father gave him the opportunity for a second term. There was a rumour that his father pleaded that if a child failed a class, he would be allowed to repeat. For that comic reason, the man won the election for the second term, which ended up in another disaster that threw the man and his political party overboard!
But then, we have the case of President Muhammadu Buhari, whose first tenure was neither politically nor economically good enough to give him a second term. Why and how he won the 2019 election that took us to 2023 is still being analysed by political scientists. But I hazard a guess that it was a political consensus that the North should be allowed to complete eight years so that a Southerner could have a chance. Something likely going to play out with Tinubu’s presidency.
President Goodluck Jonathan missed a second term, and that provided support for four years in a two-term poll decision format. The political incompetence and economic mismanagement/maladministration were so glaring that another four years would have been a greater disaster. An opportunity to truncate the tenure in time was offered with the four-year, two-term option. A six-year, one-term tenure in the hands of an incompetent, sadistic, or gullible president or governor will cause irreparable damage that can easily result in the reintroduction of coup d’état with a feeling that election time was too far away.
We have many such leaders in Nigeria and all over Africa. Since the return to democracy in Nigeria in 1999, what has been the dividend of democracy to the common man? We moved from hunger to the largest number of children out of school and to Boko Haram and insecurity. Now we are battling with poverty and debt traps, insecurity, hunger, destroyed local currency, and inflation. We are in a battle we may never win to take us to a better level. In which democracy, around the world, do you see one term of X years? A “NO” vote for a six-year, one-term tenure is cast here. Let us continue with our present format.
The Tax Reform Bills have justifiably generated lots of interest among Nigerians of different callings but largely among politicians and regionalists. It is becoming unfortunately clear that a large proportion of the discussion was founded on ignorance and pretences. I have seen the data being branded and listened to or read the argument being put forward. My opinion is not centred on which states will benefit or lose out. My concern is about some elements of fiscal federalism and the equation between running the annual budget on tax and loans.
Globally, citizens do not want to pay taxes, even where what taxes are used for is very glaring. We have seen many footballers and their coaches being caught for tax avoidance or outright evasion in advanced economies where products of taxes are visible, even to the blind. I have, however, witnessed a situation in Lagos State under the Lateef Jakande and Babatunde Raji Fashola regimes where citizens were eager to pay taxes because they appreciated good governance with the use of taxes collected.
The proposed tax reform is likely to exclude over 70 per cent of working Nigerians from the tax nets. The slogan that “we don’t want to tax poverty but the rich” is deceitful. It is better to tax citizens according to their ability. When a country has about 70 per cent of its population below the poverty line and even the majority of those above the line receive income far less than the proposed taxable income, then how will the annual budgets be executed? There is also the proposal that small and medium-scale enterprises will not pay taxes and the big ones will have their corporate taxes reduced from 30% to 25%.
There have been complaints that the proportion of tax collected in Nigeria is very low, and the need to borrow to bridge the gap becomes important. I do not subscribe to no tax but will support tax reduction for some time instead of the distribution of palliatives and public borrowing to run the budgets. There is a need to improve the sources of tax and widen the tax net to cover those who have been avoiding and evading tax payments.
The federal government can set guidelines on tax collection as it did for minimum wages but cannot, within the context of a democratic setting and fiscal federalism, stop states and local governments from collecting desirable taxes and levies. The Constitution of the federal republic assigns functions for local and state governments, which will require them to have IGR. Centralisation of taxes is against the spirit of fiscal federalism. This is what the states should be discussing rather than focusing and pinning their hopes on a federation account. Sooner than later, the states will start calling for a review of the reforms.
The state and federal governments have currently burdened the economy with huge debt. The country has not built capital and infrastructure that will provide the basis for incomes to repay the humongous loans in the future, yet we want to escape the burden of repayment now and transfer the liability to future generations. Instead of building capital and infrastructure, we borrow money to buy finished products produced abroad, thus using the loans to provide jobs and incomes for the creditors.
For instance, we have vehicle assembly plants that can become complete production assemblies if locally patronised, but the federal and state governments, the largest consumers of products, prefer to import exotic vehicles produced abroad. I can recall that when Peugeot was made the official vehicle in Nigeria under General Olusegun Obasanjo as Head of State, the Nigerian Peugeot assembly improved its production, and some firms started producing batteries, windscreens, and other car accessories, creating jobs and expanding outputs while at the same time conserving foreign exchange.
The two issues raised here, one-term tenure and tax reforms, will require important changes in the constitution and the state assemblies, as well as the public should be allowed to make informed contributions. Nigerians should not allow short-term gains to create long-term problems for our future. Tax payment is a necessity, and everybody entitled to enjoy public facilities should be made to pay according to his/her ability. The children of the common man will suffer in the end, as most of these politicians have relocated their children abroad, where they will pay taxes to develop other countries and leave Nigeria in a perpetual underdevelopment.