Tax reforms: Tinubu is a well known tax collector – Adebayo

By Lateef Ibrahim Abuja

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has faulted the position of a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara that President Bola Tinubu’s tax policy is revolutionary.

Speaking in an interview, Adebayo said the President is a well-known tax collector that is determined to tax the people.

He said everybody knows that President Tinubu, even in his private life, is a well-known tax collector.

Adebayo said: “So that tax collector experience is an improvement over the disorganised system that he met on the ground.

“He did tax collection in Lagos; he’s going to do tax collection in Abuja now. The problem is that the grandiose speeches of Dogara are overstating it.

“This reform is okay. It’s not the best, but it’s far better than what they had before. But they’re overselling it because what we need to understand is that they’ve done so many other things that have made the N14 trillion they are collecting now not worth the paper on which it is written, compared to what they met on the ground”, he said.

Adebayo insisted that the value of the N14 trillion allegedly collected from taxes this year alone, is less than that of N7 trillion that was realised last year.

He, therefore, cautioned that the government should not celebrate because the people’s purchasing power is nothing to write home about.

“So, if you do it in real value, what can you buy? The purchasing power of the N14 trillion is not as sound as N7 trillion in the previous year.

His words, “Let us not over-celebrate that, but it’s a good thing to have a tax policy that the people who are running the administration understand”.

Speaking further on Tinubu’s tax system, Adebayo said he has a better tax policy that would be equitable and realistic, stressing that he would unleash the idea when the SDP wins and he assumes the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He said: “I have a better tax policy than what is current on ground, but I’m not running the government.

“This is the one they want to use. When the SDP wins and I come in, I’ll give you a fairer, more equitable, and more realistic tax system that increases the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”

He noted that instead of taxing Nigerians into productivity, Tinubu is taxing Nigerians out of productivity; a development he said would certainly shrink the economy.

According to him, “The problem you’re going to have is that if you tax people out of productivity instead of taxing them into productivity, people will stop spending, no new jobs will be created, no new fields will open and the economy will be shrinking.

“The economy has to shrink because you are not creating infrastructure out of the money, and you’re not creating new fields. There are so many aspects of our national life that we are not investing in.

“If you don’t make investments, your GDP will not grow. If you don’t have sufficient investment, your GDP will not grow. If it doesn’t grow, especially above your population growth, you are in serious trouble, no matter how good a tax collector you are,” he said.