Happy new year, everyone! As 2025 was rolling in, we were escorted into the new year by cries of discrimination, attempted marginalisation and emasculation from some politicians who claim to be speaking for the ‘North’.
Apparently there is a coordinated effort to ensure that the proposed tax reform bill sent to the national assembly by the Tinubu government is stillborn. A section of the northern elite have planted their members around the various media to canvas that the bill be strangled. Their grouse? The legislation is ‘anti-North’!
BLACKMAIL
Usually, when people disagree with a section of a bill, they submit their protest and suggestions to the national assembly and proffer rational arguments to convince the legislators that their objection is logically defensible and socially desirable. But the politicians against the bill are not interested in making suggestions to tweak the provisions of the bill. They simply want it killed. They are also threatening to ensure that Tinubu does not win a second term in 2027 if he does not bend to their will.
Part of the reason I enjoy watching politicians playing their game is because one way or the other it provides entertainment. Politicians are the only set of people on the surface of God’s earth who believe that their motives are so well disguised as to fool the rest of humanity. The hawk glides with arrogance in the sky unmindful that the people on the ground are watching its manoeuvres.
When tv anchors ask the anti-tax-reform gladiators to pinpoint the exact clauses they find objectionable in the tax bill, they revert to their habitual circumlocution and complain that there wasn’t enough consultations before the bill was crafted. When told that the public hearing to be conducted by the legislature is meant to ensure that all shades of opinion are heard before a final decision is taken, they say that the bill does not deserve a public hearing and should be scrapped completely.
The anti-tax-reform lobby is all too predictable and presumptuous. When they say ‘the North’, they mean their family and hangers-on. Take the case of Senator Ndume who railed against the transfer of a department of the Central Bank from Abuja to Lagos as an anti-North move. Hearing his intemperate lingo, you would think that Lagos was not part of Nigeria. It turned out that his daughter was a staff of the CBN and the senator was only trying to prevent the transfer of his daughter from the federal capital to the former capital. The logic of the claim was that whatever affected the good senator also affected the North!
INCLUSIVITY
From the political wilderness came the voice of the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el Rufai, condemning what he sees as Tinubu’s nepotism. In a cryptic message of his X platform where he reacted to Farouk Kperogi’s article, “Tinubu’s Buharisation of the NNPC”, el Rufai wrote:
“Two wrongs do not make a right. Sensible inclusion always trumps arrogant exclusion.”
Diehard Tinubuphiliacs have sworn that at the appropriate time, they will ask el Rufai to elucidate on his theory of ‘arrogant exclusion’. Many of them pointed out that el Rufai was the least qualified politician to talk about arrogant exclusion.
It was because of the former governor’s bad record in matters of inclusivity that his political rival, Senator Shehu Sani, argued that El-Rufai had no moral authority to criticise Tinubu. Sani accused el Rufai of turning Kaduna into an apartheid state during his tenure. According to him, “There were people who were silent when Buhari was filling political offices with his kinsmen and have now found their voice when the equation doesn’t favour them. Let’s not make reference to the nepotism that marginalised Southern Kaduna for eight years. Kaduna was an apartheid state for eight years.”
So, when next you hear politicians like el Rufai claiming that the North is marginalised or that the Tinubu government is unduly favouring Lagos with its plan to participate in provision of rail infrastructure in the former capital, you may want to seek further clarification. Pray, if Nigeria under Buhari’s leadership could fund a railway line to Maradi in Niger Republic, why can’t the country under Tinubu invest in its former capital?
My own theory of a common wealth is that every section of the country should be helped to thrive and flourish. A poor North will negatively affect Nigeria. That is why it is important to carry the region along with many productive schemes such as the newly established Ministry of Livestock development. But the days of the feeding bottle are over.
Mercifully, the North is rich in mineral resources. All that is left is to develop the human resources. Instead of fighting to share in the VAT generated by other states from the consumption of alcohol, the northern states should embark on a massive basic education and skill acquisition drive. Such a move will rid the highways of the street urchins known as almajiri and at the same time provide the needed manpower to translate the vast mineral resources to wealth.
But let no one delude himself that time has stood still in any part of Nigeria since Independence. It will be delusional to categorically talk of the North as one monolith as if we were in 1959. If a plebiscite was taken today, it is likely that we shall find that different sections of the country have different concerns. So, when a political gambler threatens that he would ensure that ‘the North’ does not vote for Tinubu in 2027, you may want to ask, “Which North?”
TAX BILL
There is no ambiguity in the intentions of the tax bill. According to the presidential committee saddled with the task, the reform seeks the discontinuation of all consumption taxes other than VAT. Its explanation is as follows:
Basis of distribution – the current formula for sharing VAT among states is based on 20% derivation, 50% equality and 30% population. The tax reform proposes a different model of derivation which will attribute VAT to the place of supply and consumption rather than the current model which attributes VAT to the state where it is remitted thereby favouring states with companies headquarters. Further, derivation under the new model will account for 60% of VAT distribution for better equity and to discourage any state from seeking to administer VAT as a state tax, which will not only result in much lower revenue for all tiers of government but will impose a higher burden on businesses… The 5% to be ceded by the FG can be set aside for equalisation transfers to cater for any shortfall to a state under the new model. This ensures that no state is worse off in the short term while significantly enhancing economic activities and revenue for all states in the medium to long term.
If the above is true, I honestly don’t see why any section of the country would be crying foul. A more positive reaction would be to do the math, gather your papers and raise your objections at the national assembly hearing. That is the democratic imperative, not blackmail.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I welcome you to 2025 with the words of the contemporary Turkish playwright, Mehmet Murat ildan: “In the New Year, never forget to thank your past years because they enabled you to reach today! Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future.”
Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on wole.olaoye@gmail.com, Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021
