I shall begin today with a very short story. You see, the gorilla, which
today lives in the jungle was once part of organised human settlement.
He however took to the bush when the cost of living among humans became
an unbearable burden on him. As we all know, to keep the society running
and organised, money, which comes by way of taxes, levies, fines and
sundry payments is required.
In truth, the gorilla had tried to meet up but the frequency and
intensity of these payments were such that his best efforts remained
inadequate. What to do, he voted for liberation and ran with his entire
household into the jungle where nothing is paid to nobody. And so,
besides the science of evolution, which connects man with apes, the
gorilla was actually a man at one time. He could not rise up to the
challenge of taxation in the normal human setting and simply backed out
to become part of the freedom in the jungle.
The Urhobos call gorilla ossia. If in the course of deliberations that
border on the need for more revenue for whatever purpose and an Urhobo
man drops the reminder that ossai was a man, do get his message right.
He is saying the quest and drive for more money within the given
circumstances could drive some people to the jungle like ossai. By error
or design, there is no Urhobo man or woman in the federal cabinet and
so there is nobody to drop that line – ossai was a man – to caution on
the Federal Government’s excessive quest for money through taxation.
The speed at which the revenue vehicle is driving is too much. It is the
kind of speed that sent the gorilla to the bush and I don’t want what
happened to gorilla many, many, years ago to happen to any Nigerian. In
fact, it could be worse in the event of a fatal crash as men and women
would be forced beyond the jungles into early graves.
PMB was in London recently to continue the lamentation of
paucity of funds to run a successful government due to the same
overbeaten reason – the stealing of all there was in the national
treasury by the immediate past regime. He even regretted coming in as
president at these fiscally perilous times. He spoke as if good
leadership is about coasting home in good times and tides. He came close
to throwing up his hands in the air in absolute helplessness.
Sincerely, I am tired of reminding Buhari that the star shines only when
it is dark enough and not when the day is bright and fair.
He is fixated on money and not ideas. That is the real problem and I do
not know who to approach to refocus him. The man has successfully pushed
and sustained the fallacy that good governance comes with good money
and not good ideas. Thus, instead of searching for big ideas, the
President is obsessed with looking for big money to make his mark as a
leader and the London lamentation is part of the gimmick to raise big
money to govern Nigeria.
It is a native logic that puts money before vision and strategy. That is
why President Buhari is crowing to high heavens of the miracle of a TSA
(Treasury Single Account) that has mopped up over two trillion naira
for safe keeping in the vaults of the Central Bank (CBN), while the
banking system, the manufacturing sector and the economy generally edge
towards extinction from the resultant liquidity squeeze.
In the journey to economic prosperity, it is vision and strategy that
show the way all the time. It is a clear walk to doom if the profiling
changes and money stays ahead of vision and strategy. A demonstration of
that is the huge mess that is the 2016 budget. No vision or deep
thinking went into the preparation of the document. As it were, the
motivation was to appropriate monies into whatever capital and recurrent
sub-heads and then raise a huge invoice of about N6 trillion in
anticipation of an unguided public spending.
Consequently, the 2016 budget has lost its essence as a documented guide
to development within the time specified. It is looking more like a
proposal by a group of individuals to raise funds for self help. And we
are all being co-opted into this fund-raising effort through taxation.
In this regard, Babatunde Raji Fashola is doing far better than others.
He comes across as a better tax master than he does as a super minister
in charge of works, power and housing.
For instance, while Buhari was lamenting the absence of funds in London,
workers under the aegis of the Nigeria Labour Congress were in the
streets in Nigeria protesting the 45 per cent hike in electricity tariff
announced by Fashola. The workers complained that Nigerians were being
asked to pay even more for darkness. Fashola did not say anything about
visible and quantifiable improved supply of public electricity that
would warrant the huge hike. Instead, he went further to drop hint that
tolls may return on federal highways in continuation of a suffocating
tax regime to keep government liquid.
At the level of doing business, the driving speed is even more breath
taking. There are overlapping tax descriptions, all bordering on
multiple taxation to squeeze money from the private sector for
government. I will not be able to state things as they are but importers
who wear the shoes can tell better the experience at the ports where
payment of duties has become almost boundless. In the face of declining
oil revenues, the Nigeria Customs Service now has an onerous mandate to
over reach itself in revenue collection to bridge the shortfalls.
Waivers have been cancelled pushing manufacturer into an unprepared and
hurried search for creative ways to engage the challenges. It has not
been too smooth and it is beginning to appear more profitable to stop
doing business altogether. It explains the dwindling industrial capacity
utilization and the attendant loss of jobs.
It is also beginning to sound nice to retain money outside the banking
system since banking has become one big burden on people. Sundry bank
charges have been rationalized into a tax policy to take money from the
people to government. Everybody – business people, workers and ordinary
Nigerians – is choking yet there is no corresponding buoyancy in the
economy to cushion the incidence of taxation.
This is the contradiction in the Buhari’s approach. He is over taxing an
economy that is almost comatose without first spending big to stimulate
production. Somebody among those milling around should introduce him to
John Maynard Keynes and also tell him that in macroeconomics
management, government does not save but spend big when the economy is
moving southward. As it is today, Buhari is seeking to reap without
sowing. In plain terms, the government is over taxing a population that
is not producing and therefore not earning. That is voodoo and it has no
slot in a scientific macroeconomic order where things are measured and
predictable.
Enough to say if the heat continues, all options shall evaporate,
leaving everyone with the gorilla option – vote for self-liberation and
take to the bush. I kindly advise that instead of sounding sanctimonious
and claiming to have all the answers, Buhari should seek help outside
himself. The ugliness surrounding the preparation and presentation of
the 2016 budget shows clearly that the President does not have in place a
substantive or even shadowy team to drive recovery for the economy. The
federal cabinet is just a bunch of persons working most times at cross
purposes because each has a different understanding of CHANGE.
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PLEASE BE POLITE