Dr Usman Bugaje is a former National Secretary of the defunct Action Congress (AC). In this interview, monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s administration and the Tax Reform Bills, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes

How would you assess President Tinubu’s administration so far?

Well, if this is a session to assess the presidency of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I think we would need more time to do that. But for all I know and for all many Nigerians remember President Tinubu for is the suffering that has been associated with his presidency since he arrived.

Yes, I used to know him to be a man of ideas with books around, and we used to engage because if you remember, I was the National Secretary of the Action Congress (AC), which later became Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN, while I was still the national secretary. So, I had to interact very closely and fairly consistently for a long period. But I find all that has evaporated. I don’t see the ideas. I don’t see the dynamism. I don’t see that progressiveness.

I see somebody who is almost turning to a monarch. In the last media interview, if I got it right, he did talk about the tax bill being sacrosanct. How can it be sacrosanct? This is a bill in front of the National Assembly. Even at that, it was not properly presented to the National Assembly because when the Senate presented it, it was not on the order paper. And you can’t discuss by parliamentary rules and procedures any matter which is not already on the order paper.

So, this idea to smuggle things and this idea of coming through the back door creates a lot of suspicion. And you see, I can go on, but let me make three points, and this is not just about President Tinubu, it covers almost all our political leaders, or if you like, the leadership that this democracy has produced in the last 25 years.

Whatever man of the hour you become and whatever thing you want to do, unless you capture these things or you address these issues, it’s very difficult for anybody to trust you, no matter how well-intentioned one.

The fact that we don’t have an appreciation of the future; when government spokespersons speak and when ministers address us on issues around their mandate, their ministries, they don’t seem to have the figures.

Food insecurity

They don’t seem to have the idea of the previous efforts. And there is no vision. We can’t see. Let me just use one or two things to illustrate that. One, in 2023, the grains deficit, just grains, that’s food that Nigerians eat, the deficit, that the difference between consumption and actual production, was about 30 million metric tons.

Since then, we have had floods in Maiduguri, floods in Jigawa, floods in Taraba, floods in Zamfara, floods in so many other places. Insecurity has escalated. That must have affected us. So, what is our grain deficit this year? And what are the measures to address this grain deficit? If you can’t have food, you can’t have peace and you cannot talk about reforms.

We, as a people, should tell ourselves the truth that this country is about to collapse, and we should all come together as citizens and see what we can do to salvage our country

You cannot talk about taxation. So, I don’t see a conversation that demonstrates a proper understanding of the issues in agriculture. The first point is the fact that the government, and this is not just the APC administration, even the PDP and other political parties that have ruled in different states, don’t have an appreciation of the future.

When they speak about the problems of this country and they want to fix it, I don’t see a proper understanding of the problems. And that’s a starting point and like I use agriculture to demonstrate it.

We did a rough survey and we found that nearly 60 per cent, at least in the North, of tertiary institutions, and this cuts across universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, colleges of legal studies, 60 per cent are not able to go back to school this year because it’s either they cannot pay for the registration fees or they have paid for the registration fees but they cannot pay for the transport, or they have paid for both registration and transport but they cannot find food to eat. They cannot find the money to eat food.

Education sector

Now, I drew attention and I was quite happy that the Minister for Education was there, he picked interest in that and he invited me and we had a very good discussion. But the point here is that the government does not seem to be aware of these facts. And even the student loan scheme that they have now started, it’s not working and there is no monetary evaluation. So, all these are matters that will affect whatever policy, whatever programme of government. And these are things that are not being addressed.

The second point is that governance in the 21st century is a corporate scientific business. You see, corporate governance is about the people, it is about purpose, it is about process, it is about performance. These are the four Ps of corporate governance. I don’t see governance in this country taking that shape and process.

So, we have a lot of the policies, like the tax policy, but there is no process. A team was set up. They may mean well, fair enough, but there was no sufficient consultation. For example, the National Economic Council was not consulted and they rejected it.

The governors were not consulted and they rejected it and taxation is concurrent, it is on the Concurrent List. However, the President is saying this is sacrosanct. Sacrosanct how? I mean, this is a bill in front of the National Assembly. It has to go through the normal processes.

The President is beginning to behave like a monarch in a way because if you go back to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, you’ll find that the constitution in sequencing government, the National Assembly always comes first. The executive comes second. And if you look at chapter two, which is the fundamental objectives of directive state policy, you will see the focus on these things.

Therefore, how can a president speak about a bill that he has presented to the National Assembly as sacrosanct? I mean, this issue of governance is a huge problem that we need to address if we want anything to work. The third point is basically to say that the political culture that is reigning is in contradiction with the principles of good governance.

Good governance, which delivers is characterized by accountability, transparency, rule of law, and which is following the processes as established by the constitution or by whatever regulatory authorities. But you find that in the political culture, the demands on the politicians or holders of political office do not even allow them to do their work. There is a huge demand out there for money and we have seen what has happened in this last festive season.

Ministers were found in Abuja spending hundreds of millions on ceremonies, showering money, while 90 per cent or more of the citizens could not feed. The last statistics, I read that 33 million are on the verge of starvation, meaning that they will starve in this country. These are the issues that I think we need to be looking at, not the Man of the Year business. I find that ridiculous.

Can you share some of the clauses in the Tax Reform Bills you are not comfortable with and how you think they can be addressed, or do you want it scrapped completely and look for something else?

The team that went along to craft this nearly 300-page Tax Reform Bills, in the first place, I have had to engage with. I think, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele or at least I shared a platform with him on this discussion. It doesn’t appear that this team understands the society for which that policy is made. This looks very much like some comfortable professionals living in Lagos and Abuja.

They have no idea of the consequences of what they are proposing. Admittedly, there are attempts in the bills to soften or to make things easy for the struggling citizens trying to make a living in terms of taxation.

But on the other hand, there are several other major things that they have done to create a kind of disparity between the states. Even the bill itself has not defined the most controversial issue of what is attribution, and what is derivation.

I mean, in the bill itself, there is no definition for this. And when you use words like this in a bill, one of the major requirements is that these things should be clearly defined. Part of the controversy is that if you have not defined it, then everybody will define it in their own way.

And then it’s one definition against the other. We don’t know exactly which one is going to hold. My thinking is that the proper thing is for this Tax Reform Bills to completely be put in the dustbin and then a process started. I do appreciate tax reform. I do think we should broaden the net. Many people, who are supposed to pay taxes are not paying.

There are a lot of things that we need to do and we can use that to re-engineer the economy. For me, there are three things you need to address before you even start looking at tax. Security is very important because, without security, production is going to be very low. And the space for production is shrinking as insecurity increases. The insecurity we are going to be looking at is not just the Boko Haram or the rural banditry.

There is an emerging urban banditry because of the lack of jobs in the cities. When I spoke about the likely emergence of urban banditry because young people who are in school cannot go back to tertiary institutions, I did refer to Brazil some 25 years ago.

I referred to Sao Paulo, a city that became almost the helicopter capital of the world because the elite could not drive their cars on the streets. They will only use a helipad, take a helicopter to the office, a helicopter to the airport, helicopter to wherever they are going.

We are getting there. And that’s the kind of appreciation of the future that I referred to, which appears to me to be completely absent within governance because the team around the president I don’t know what they are thinking about. They seem to be out of touch with the reality.

Tax bill has no relevance to the current economic crisis that this country is going through and I would rather suggest we start a process that takes cognizance of the kind of economy we are in

So, coming back to the tax bill, I feel this bill has no relevance to the current economic crisis that this country is going through.

And I would rather suggest we start a whole process that takes cognizance of the kind of economy we are in, the challenges our economy is facing, and therefore craft something that can gradually pick the economy up and will make or facilitate production in a way that will make this economy to begin to recover.

We are today nearly 250 million in population. By 2030, which is barely five years from now, we are expected by United Nations projections to be 300 million. If we had a 30 million grains deficit in 2023 and we are not improving in our production, how do we feed the population?

How do we provide jobs for them? How do we provide education? How do we provide healthcare? These are the things that politicians should be discussing but I don’t find them. They are busy partying around, throwing money around, exhibiting excessive consumption, and they don’t seem to understand the society they are supposed to be leading.

You said that President Tinubu is turning himself into a monarch. Is it not the constitution that makes it possible for every Nigerian president to function like a monarch, in addition to the political culture we seem to have established over the years under the 1999 Constitution?

Let me start with the constitution. Yes, with all its faults, the 1999 Constitution still has certain elements that can check the excesses of an executive. As I said, if you go to chapter two, the sequence of institutions of government starts with the National Assembly.

The power of the National Assembly is strong enough to check the president. It’s just that we don’t have a National Assembly. We have a group of people, who are just there to make money.

They have no idea what their job is, and they just go to these poor constituencies and spread rice and palm oil, and then nobody talks about that. If we continue that way, someday we’ll just wake up to a riot. Yes, we need to address those weaknesses in our constitution, but even as it is at the moment, we’re not operating it properly.

Coming back to the tax bill and the likely public hearings that are going to be done, I honestly think that, fair enough, it is the process that we have to go through, and we should do it, but it would be much better for President Tinubu to withdraw this bill and restart a process of consultation, and he’s more likely to achieve the kind of reforms that he wants through that process than simply railroading this particular bill through. I hope the public hearing will be very robust as many people have prepared their position papers.

I’ve been part of about three committees, where reports on the details, clause by clause have been done, and many people are ready to do that, but why do we have to fight over things that should ideally be for the benefit of the country. Why do we have to create a battlefield in the public hearing of the National Assembly?

There are better ways to do these things, and this is why I said that governance in the 21st century is a corporate scientific business. There are rules and regulations. There are best practices, and it’s focusing on people, on purpose, on process and performance. If we go by those things, we’ll find things a lot easier.

This is what Singapore is using, and that is where it is where it is. This is what even China is using in its way. All the countries that have been making progress in the last 25 years have been using some of these best practices. Here, they have all collapsed. Here, they just wake up and do things the way they like.

It is not a question of APC, PDP,or any other party. It’s not a question of President Bola Tinubu or any other person. Look, we, as a people, should tell ourselves the truth that this country is about to collapse, and we should all come together as citizens and see what we can do to salvage our country.

This country has a great promise. It’s a country with the largest population in Africa. In 2025, it’s expected to be the third largest country after India and China. It has great potential. It has a role to play in Africa and the world in the coming few decades.

Why should we allow it to be stunted? Why should it be allowed to be where it is at the moment? We have the ability. We have the intention. So, why can’t President Tinubu or any president that comes, facilitate the process of getting citizens to contribute in a very amicable manner to be able to raise this country? The credit will go to him if he succeeds in doing that.