By Chukwu David 

Opposition against President Bola Tinubu’s Tax Reform Bills by state governors appears to have whittled, following supportive submissions made to the bills by Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State.

Sule expressed support for some provisions of the tax reform bills during a Town Hall conversation on the legislative proposals, which was aired by Channels Television.

During the three-hour town hall conversation on the tax reform bills, monitored by our correspondent, prominent Nigerians like former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, Chief Executive Officer of Global Investments and Trade Company, Baba Yusuf, Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, etc, stated that the time for the reform is now.

Governor Sule, who made his contribution towards the end of the televised programme through telephone conversation, said that if the Town Hall had taken place earlier, the governors wouldn’t have taken the position they took for withdrawal of the bills from the National Assembly a few weeks ago.

He pointed out that if clarifications made by the Chairman of Presidential Committee, that came up with the bills, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, at the Town Hall conversation on new formula for distribution of Value Added Tax (VAT) among the three tiers of government, known to governors a few weeks back, reservations expressed about the reform, wouldn’t have arisen.

He said: “I have listened to clarifications made on perceived misgivings by the Governors’ Forum and some other critical stakeholders about the Tax Reform Bills and getting inclined to the proposed reform, particularly in the area of elimination of multiple taxation.

Some of us governors today were in the recent past, key players in the companies that generate and pay heavy VAT to government coffers and clearly understand the lopsidedness of proceeds sharing being aimed to be corrected now.

“Specifically, if Oyedele had informed the governors that a new model of 60 per cent VAT distribution for better equity is part of the reform, as he clarified at this Town Hall Conversation, there wouldn’t have been much disagreement from the onset, meaning that the conversation being done now, was what the Governors’ Forum requested for before forging ahead with processing the bill for consideration at the National Assembly.”