…says Tax Reform Bills smuggled into NASS should be thrown into dustbin

Professor Usman Bugaje, a former National Secretary of the defunct Action Congress (AC) – which later evolved into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and subsequently became part of the All Progressives Congress (APC)- shared his insights on key national issues. In this interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI, Bugaje discussed President Bola Tinubu’s recognition as ThisDay Newspapers Man of the Year, the tax reform bills, and the political options available to Northern Nigeria ahead of the 2027 elections, among other topics. Excerpts:

ThisDay Newspapers gave President Tinubu an award as the Man of the Year for his courage, determination, reforms, and how he has intentionally pursued those reforms. Do you have a different opinion in terms of how he has been very deliberate and has been consistent?

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 I mean ThisDay has every right to declare whoever it wants as Man of the Year. And I don’t quite know what criteria and what methods, you know, they followed to arrive at that conclusion. But for all I know and for many Nigerians who remember President Tinubu, it 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 Action Congress, AC, which later became the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, while I was still the National Secretary.

So, I interacted very closely and fairly consistently with him for a long period. But I think 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 into a monarch. In the last media interview, if I got it right, he talked about the tax bill being sacrosanct. How can it be sacrosanct? This is a bill that is before the National Assembly. Even at that, it was not properly presented to the assembly because when the Senate presented it, it was not on the order paper. However, you can’t discuss, by parliamentary rules and procedures, any matter which is not in the order paper. So, this idea of smuggling things and coming through the back door creates a lot of suspicion. I can go on, but let me make three points, if you don’t mind, and this is not just about President Tinubu, it covers almost all our political leaders, or the leadership that this democracy has produced in the last 25 years. The fact is that we don’t have an appreciation of the future, when the spokesperson of the government speaks and when ministers address us on issues around their mandates, their ministries, they don’t seem to have the figures. They don’t have an idea of the previous efforts, and there is no vision.

Let me just use one or two things to illustrate that. One, in 2023, on the grains deficit, the food that Nigerians eat, the difference between consumption and actual production, was about 30 million metric tonnes. Since then, we have had floods in Maiduguri, in Jigawa, in Taraba, Zamfara, and in so many other places, and insecurity has escalated. So that must have affected us. But what is our grain deficit this year and what are the measures put in place to address the deficit? If you can’t have food, you can’t have peace, and you cannot talk about reforms or taxation. So, I don’t see a conversation that demonstrates a proper understanding of the issues in agriculture.

The first point is that the government and this is not just the APC administration, even the Peoples Democratic Party (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 the country and they want to fix them, they don’t have a proper understanding of the problems. That’s the starting point and like I used agriculture to demonstrate, I will also give an example of education. We did a rough survey and we found out that nearly 60 per cent of students, at least in tertiary institutions in the North across universities, polytechnic, colleges of education, and colleges of legal studies, cannot go back to school this year because they cannot afford registration fees or they have paid the registration fees, but cannot afford transport cost, or have paid for both registration and transport, but don’t have food to eat. I was quite happy that the minister of education was there and he picked interest in it, so we invited him and we had a very good discussion.

But the point here is that the government does not seem to be aware of these facts. Even the student loan scheme is not working and there is no monetary evaluation. All these are matters that will affect the policies, or programmes of the government. These are the things that are not being addressed. The second point is that governance in the 21st century is a corporate scientific business. Corporate governance is about the people, it’s about purpose, it’s about process, and it’s about performance. These are the four Ps of corporate governance. I don’t see governance in this country taking that shape and process. A lot of the policies, such as the tax policy, have no process. They might mean well, but there was no sufficient consultation. For example, the National Economic Council has not been consulted. Taxation is concurrent, it’s on the concurrent list, and here the president is saying it is sacrosanct, sacrosanct how? I mean, this is a bill that is before 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 of the constitution, 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 and say it is sacrosanct? I mean, this issue of governance is something 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 is characterised by accountability, transparency, the rule of law, and following the processes as established by the constitution or by regulatory authorities. But you find that in the political culture, the demands on the politicians or holders of political offices do not even allow them to do their work. There is a huge demand out there for money and we have seen what happened in the last festive season. Ministers were found in Abuja spending millions of naira on ceremonies, showering money while 90% or more of the citizens could not feed. I read that 33 million people are on the verge of starvation. These are the issues that I think we need to look at, not the ‘Man of the Year’ business. I find that ridiculous.

Could you share with us some of the clauses in the Tax Reform Bills that you are not comfortable with and how do you think they can be addressed, or do you want it scrapped completely?
The team that crafted this nearly 300-page Tax Reform Bills, in the first place, I have had to engage them, I think, I spoke with Mr. Taiwo Oyedele or at least I shared a platform with him on this, has not done well. 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 bill to soften or make things easy for the struggling citizens that are 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 among the states. Even the bill itself has not defined the most controversial issue of what is attribution, and what is derivation. I mean there is no definition for these in the bill itself. When you use words like these in a bill, one of the major things, the major requirement, is that they should be clearly defined. Part of the controversy is that if you have not defined it, then everybody will define it his or her own way. 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 be completely put in the dustbin and then start a new process entirely. I do appreciate tax reform, but I don’t think we should broaden the net. Many people are supposed to pay taxes that they are not paying. There are a lot of things that we need to do, which we can use to re-engineer the economy.

For me, there are three things you need to address before you even start looking at this tax. Security is very important because, without security, production is going to be very low. Also, the space for production is shrinking as insecurity increases. The insecurity we are going to be looking at is not just Boko Haram or rural banditry, there is an emerging urban banditry because of lack of jobs in the cities. There is likely emergence of urban banditry because young people who are in tertiary institutions cannot go back to schools. 25 years ago, Sao Paulo in Brazil became almost a helicopter capital of the world because the elites could not drive their cars on the streets.