Nasarawa State Governor, Abdullahi Sule has said that the tax reforms initially proposed would have brought more suffering to the people of the country.
Governor Sule said the initial bills which allocated 60 percent of the entire Value Added Tax (VAT) collected from across the country to Lagos State alone put other states and their people at great disadvantage.
He spoke while playing host to members of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), in Lafia, Nasarawa State capital.
“Companies whose goods are consumed in the North pay VAT at their headquarters in Lagos or Abuja. Who benefits? Lagos State and you said Lagos State takes 60 percent of the total VAT? That would not be fair to Adamawa. In Nasarawa you have several of these small companies mining lithium and tantalite. Where are the headquarters of these companies? In Lagos and Abuja. When the time to pay VAT they pay in Abuja. FCT benefits. Is that fair to Nasarawa?,” he explained.
He said he found it necessary to add his voice against the bills because of the observed shortfalls and loopholes.
Sule noted that he has nothing against President Bola Tinubu when he opposed the tax bills but that his concern for the suffering of the people that would have worsened if the bills had been upheld in their original forms.
“The President wants to make an impact, he wants to bring solutions to some of our difficulties. For some of us, we had to go back and say ‘No Sir, it is not at the right time, not when inflation is at 34 percent, the highest ever.’ You don’t make that kind of change like that. I swore with the Holy Quran that I would defend the interest of the people and then I see this is happening and I keep quiet?” he stated.
He said his experience in the past six years has exposed him to the level of suffering the people have to endured, adding that the bills would further compounded their problems.
“Being a Governor, I now understand the other part of it, the suffering of the people. As I was explaining to some people as the MD of Dangote Sugar, if you tell me VAT is now 15 percent and not 5 percent, do I lose any money at Dangote? All I will do is that my sugar is going to be N90, 000 and customer, you have a different bill. Your tax is going to be 15 percent. What is my own role? I will remit it to FIRS. The more I remit it to FIRS, the more FIRS is happy with me. I’m achieving. But who is suffering? That is the point we are making,” he said.
He commended President Tinubu for being a listening leader after it became obvious that the original bills were drafted without wide consultations in order to address grey areas.
“The problem is that you have to be able to speak the truth on what you swore by at the right time. It is not that you are against anybody. In fact, I am not even against either Zack or Oyedele, they are my friends and they remain my friends. But I felt, we should have consulted properly.
“We pointed out the issue to the President during a meeting involving Governors and the tax reforms committee. I stood by my earlier position. The President said, you know what Sule, you people go, look at it, make the changes in order for it to be better for Nigeria. I was done. For me, that was the end of the discussion right there,” he said.
