“With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach.“
The katakata that has accompanied the tax reform bill is laying to bare once again how intractably difficult it is to govern and transform a country as structurally complicated as Nigeria. The most difficult bill to pass even in the best of circumstances including in countries with a coherent national identity is the tax bill. At the core of any country’s sovereignty is the ability to impose and collect taxes. On it hinges the ability of any government to carry out their core governance responsibilities. One can therefore only imagine how close to impossible it would be to reform the tax collection law in a country like ours with no national consensus, and where the constituent parts treat the country like meat from a stranded bleached whale to be plundered.
Hence, the presidency should have anticipated the stiff resistance it is now facing from the different power centers each with conflicting agenda.
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It is a known fact that the north has a higher dependency ratio on federal revenue, hence a tax reform bill that shifts the locus of collection and distribution proportionately to the source will disadvantage them. There are also a few states in the southwest with the same higher dependency ratio, whose internally generated revenue is nothing to write home about and whose productive economies do not generate enough VAT to meet their budgetary obligations. In those instance it would be suicidal for the governors to support a tax reform bill that disadvantages them.
With his local government autonomy, the deregulation of the power to generate and distribute electricity, and now the tax reform bill, President Tinubu is strategically attempting to restructure the country through the back door approach. He has chosen that approach knowing full well that a full scale restructuring bill would be dead on arrival in a Senate and a House of Representatives where the north has clear numerical advantage.
The north and some southern governors are sending a clear message to the President that they are not ready for restructuring, which might lead to the diminution of their power to tax and control local government allocation as they choose.
Nigerians have been shouting restructuring, restructuring and now as President Tinubu begins to unpack what restructuring looks like some governors are beginning to develop cold feet knowing that their own power might be eroded.
Barring a miracle, the tax bill might have suffered a fatal blow. Some of the senators and members of the house of representatives that are opposed to the bills know who butters their bread and who can also put sand in their gaari, the governors. They would dare not go against their wishes.
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Nigerians are learning in real time how intractable it is to reform a dysfunctional country like Nigeria which remains 64 years after independence, a mere geographical expression like Chief Awolowo described it. Nigeria is like an arranged marriage between two partners each of which hates and distrusts one another, seeks to take advantage of one another, and yet are too afraid to disengage and dissolve their dysfunctional union because they figure out that like trying to separate a conjoined Siamese twins, the cost of disengagement might be too high to pay including the possibility of death on the surgical table.
That is the intractable conundrum that our country has found itself. President Tinubu is putting everything at stake including his second term aspiration with his bold reform agenda. Only time will tell if it was a risk worth taking.
Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
