Nigeria’s Low Tax Intake: Blame Weak Economy, Breach Of Social Contract

 By Olu Fasan

Recently, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, lamented Nigeria’ low tax revenues. Two weeks ago, when launching the IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Fund’s Director for Africa, Abebe Selassie, said: “For a country like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with all those development spending needs, we think it is problematic that the tax revenue to GDP is only 8-9 per cent when it should be a lot higher.”

A few years ago, in its 2019 Article IV Consultation with Nigeria, the IMF made the same point. It said Nigeria suffered from “low tax mobilisation”, adding: “The revenue base is simply too low to address the current challenges”. Compared with the sub-Saharan African average of 18.6 per cent, Nigeria’s 8-9 per cent is minuscule and truly shocking. Like the IMF, successive Nigerian governments have fretted about it.

Is School Really A Scam?

 By Precious Fasipe 

‘School is a sham!' I’m sure you’ve heard this claim before, or probably even said it. It is a common slogan echoed by many frustrated Nigerian students due to one or many experiences they have had in school. But is school really a scam?

A school is simply an institution that provides instructions, and its main functions are to educate and socialise students.

However, a scam is a dishonest scheme. It can also be said to be a deceptive scheme or trick used to cheat someone out of something. This usually involves both the person who benefits from the scam (the scammer) and the victim (the scammed). “School na scam” in this context means school is a fraud, school is a lie, we do not need school, the school system is corrupt, and someone is benefiting from it.

Ganduje, Sanusi And Other Monarchs

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With a hasty dismissal of Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as victims of self-induced embroilment in a power tussle, we are denied vital lessons for national development. Again, there is the cynicism that Ganduje who is allegedly steeped in corruption, fecklessness and vendetta lacks the altruism that should underpin his dismantling of the Sanusi monarchy. But until Sanusi secures judicial validation, his royal influence remains vitiated as his centuries-old Kano emirate is split into five. 

*Gov Ganduje and Emir Sanusi

We must appropriate the development in Kano State as an opportunity to assess once again the relevance of the traditional institution to contemporary existence. In Nigeria, like some other parts of the world, communities at inchoate stages of development where they lacked defined institutions for cohesion might have had a need for traditional rulers. But with the development of great institutions for self-regulation, Nigeria does not need the traditional institution.

Dr. Death: The White South African Doctor Who Killed Blacks With Biological Weapons

By Joel Savage

Dubbed "Dr. Death" by the media, Wouter Basson was controversially granted amnesty by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2002, escaping multiple charges of murder, and the commission of a pill with a substance to make black women infertile. The development of biological weapons that only attack a certain group of people is not new. During the Apartheid era, South African Wouter Basson, nicknamed 'Doctor Death', was the head of the 7th Medical Division of the South African army. 

*Wouter Basson (Dr. Death)

He was the leader of 'project Coast' from 1981 to 1993. Readers mustn't forget that in most of our articles we have made it clear that the US army or military scientists are responsible for planting biological weapons such as Ebola in African jungles. This evidence is enough for any sensible African leader to prevent the building of US base in Africa to give them such access to test biological weapons in Africa. This department, which was involved in the development and production of chemical and biological weapons, developed T-shirts with poison. This poison eventually caused fatal heart defects.

Nigeria’s Arrested Development And Bill Gates Wake-Up Call

By Magnus Onyibe

By now, most Nigerians would be familiar with Bill Gate’s incisive perspective on Nigeria’s development because his speech to the National Economic Council has gone viral. So there is no need repeating the fact that he identified health and education as sectors that Nigerian policy makers have to rejig in the Economic Recovery Growth Plan, ERGP to enable the full realization of our country’s potentials. This is because he noticed that even if the ERGP boasts of being focused on Nigerian people via investment in healthcare and education which are the critical elements of human development, attention seem to be skewed in favor of physical infrastructure to the detriment of sustainable human development from birth.

*Bill Gates

According to Gates, for real development that would make reasonable impact on the polity to take place, both human and physical infrastructure have to be developed pari pasu.

To me, Gates’ perspective is a pretty straight forward analogy of the prospects and impediments to Nigeria’s much anticipated lift off from the poverty trap. But such positive optics of Gates presentation is not shared by Nasir El Rufai who was part of the audience at the forum. He faulted Gates’ presentation and offered a counter view which is that the ERGP is a great document as it is. He is of the view that it only needs to be adopted at the state level for the vision behind it to be accomplished.

Polio, Lassa And Yellow Fever: Where Is The Political Will?

By Patrick Dele Cole

Since the conception of Nigeria as an independent country it has struggled with a number of deadly viruses and diseases. The most prominent and reoccurring have been polio, Lassa fever and yellow fever. These three have plagued parts of the country for many years and appear sporadically, peaking and dipping throughout the country’s history. Under colonial rule vaccinations were kept for the expatriates and British citizens in the country. The indigenous population was mostly ignored and this allowed the viruses to spread unchecked throughout the country. It wasn’t until later in the country’s history that measures were taken to slow the spread and commence eradication of the disease.

Reemergence Of Viruses

The return of the polio virus in 2016 sparked a mass emergency vaccination campaign. The return was seen in two young children in the Northern part of the country, in areas affected by the Boko Haram insurgency. The return of the polio virus is especially disheartening for the country because it was a year away from being declared polio free by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO guidelines state a country must not experience any new cases of the wild polio virus for three years before being declared polio free. The return of polio can be attributed to presence of Boko Haram. The insurgency has made it very difficult to get necessary treatment and vaccines to that area of the country, allowing polio to creep back in. 

Kidnappers And Ritual Killers In Lagos

By Hope Eghagha 

Kidnapping and ritual killing seem to be on the increase in Lagos and around the country. Another way to express this is that there are more reports of abductions for ritual killings these days than we used to have them. Red Cross says that it has received reports of 10,480 missing persons in Nigeria. Every other week or even day, we read reports about ‘ritualists den’ in Nigeria. Two channels, social media and personal testimonies do a better job reporting the incidents than mainstream media. 

While mainstream outlets can be controlled not to report the incidents (to give a good albeit false image of security) no one can really control reports in social media. The latter presents gory pictures of dismembered bodies. The most recent was that of a 200 level undergraduate at the University of Port Harcourt who butchered a neighbour’s seven year old daughter for ritual, removed parts of her body and attempted to dispose of the body in a garbage heap. Shocking! Horrifying!

Nigeria: Redirecting The Lost Giant

By Fashogbon Moyinoluwa

“When we innovate, we create millions of jobs, we build the companies that lead the world, we are healthier, and we make our lives more productive”, this was written by Bill Gates on accelerating innovation with leadership. Moving Nigeria to the status of a First World nation is a challenge any willing leader should love to take on. Blessed with natural resources and a large population, Nigeria has the potential to compete with other nations of the world in any sector, but we need first to put our home in order by diversifying our economy, and restructuring our institutions to cover up the loopholes that allow for corruption.

To move Nigeria from being a third world country to a first world nation, a leader should in no particular order, invest in education, increase the manufacturing capacity of the nation, remove the hurdles facing entrepreneurs, provide basic infrastructure that propel a nation’s growth, be dedicated to providing statistics and information, promote mining and agriculture, make the environment tourist-friendly, promote the numerous traditions we have in Nigeria and most importantly, invest in and support innovation.

Every sector in present day Nigeria has decayed and the most delicate of all, which is the education sector has suffered the most. Investing in education should be top priority in moving Nigeria to the status of a first world nation. Taking a cue from first world nations like Luxembourg, Singapore, and Switzerland which have 59.6%, 54.7% and 51.3% respectively of people in high-skilled employment, according to the Human Capital Index 2015.

A leader should educate the population to the extent of attaining at least 99% literacy rate and 80% of high-skilled citizens. This can be done by revamping the educational system of the country. Firstly, all the syllabuses in Nigerian schools should be reviewed, especially in the universities, in such a way that they should meet up with the current international standards and subsequently set the standards for syllabuses around the world. Also by improving the researching capacity of our universities and making them more practical oriented than they currently are. Then go ahead to remove the numerous hurdles students face while trying to get into the universities by creating a system whereby students can apply to as many universities as they wish in other to give them more options and reduce the number of high school graduates lurking the streets. An educated population can propel innovation and turn out good leaders, and this combination is what is needed to move Nigeria to the status of a first world country. Innovation makes a country competitive in the global market.