The Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, has clarified that Nigeria is not broke as being insinuated in some quarters but only has the challenge of revenue leakages, which are currently being addressed.
Oyedele stated this on Tuesday, while answering questions from journalists at the opening of the 1st National Revenue Assurance Summit in Abuja.
The summit which was for all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory was organised by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU.
Responding to a question from journalists, the chairman of the Tax Reform Committee said “I would not say Nigeria is broke, I will say we have revenue leakages”, adding that this challenge and others are part of the reasons for the summit.
“How do you ensure that the revenue you have is getting to the government and how are you sure government is using it efficiently for the people and that is the conversation which goes beyond tax, we have government assets, government enterprises, we have natural resources which are beyond oil and gas to solid minerals.
“So our efforts now is to see how we harmonize all of that and optimize the revenue that we have. The number we have gives us the optimism that we can ramp up our revenue significantly from tax by protecting the vulnerable people.
“Those who have been paying are mostly the poorest, so to protect this people, give them exemption and then allow those who have ability to pay to start paying and that is where the money will come from and it is in our enlightened self interest for the elite and the upper middle class to pay taxes, because when they pay, they will not have to incur implicit taxes of running their own local government in their own houses which is more expensive, ” he said.
He said to overcome this challenge, the federal, states and local governments must collaborate efforts especially in the area of data and capacity.
He stressed the need for effective and reliable data collection to enable all the tiers of government ramp up revenue very quickly.
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