Knowledge gap responsible for resentment against tax reform bills —Umohinyang

Social commentator and activist, legal practitioner, Emmanuel Umohinyang, was one of those who used the structures of the Re-elect Buhari Movement (RBM) to campaign for the All progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 presidential election. Umohinyang speaks with BOLA BADMUS on the Tinubu administration and other contemporary national issues. Some excerpts:

HOW will you rate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration thus far?

I can say the government has done fairly well. Let me also say it has been a bumpy road. The government started with polices that successive administrations have been running away from. If you knew Tinubu as governor of Lagos State, he took some of the toughest decisions ever taken by his predecessors. In fact, he made nonsense of the Federal Government led by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. One of these was the ocean surge at the dreaded Bar Beach which the Federal Government was using to milk the treasury of the country back then. They used to sand fill the place every three weeks and shortly after, the ocean comes to clear everything. It was Bola Tinubu’s initiative to involve construction giants to deal with the issue by creating wave breakers. Today, you can attest to what Ahmadu Bello Way has become, a place liveable by Nigerians and foreigners, unlike in the past. Yes, the Tinubu administration started with some very stringent policies that have not made the administration popular in the eyes of Nigerians. One of these is the removal of petrol subsidy which he announced on the first day of his inauguration and the forex equalisation where the official and black markets were merged. Naturally, those two policies will affect the purse of the common man. And the president had said if he had any other option, he would have taken such option. I also remember the issue of fuel subsidy removal had always been unpopular. In 2012, I was one of those who occupied Ojota against the Jonathan administration. People have always mistaken that protest against the issue of subsidy. We never protested against removal of fuel subsidy. We protested against the corruption embedded in the subsidy regime, wherein many of those importers were doing round tripping in connivance with corrupt Customs officials at the ports. Unlike in the past, governors are now going home with billions of Naira as monthly allocation. If we had a well-structured system at the state and local government levels, the humongous resources available to them today would have impacted the people, but the Federal Government then had also been extravagant buying aircraft, yacht and exotic vehicles. I think the misconception has always been what people want to hear. I am not aware that there is any budget of the Federal Government that the issue of yacht was ever referred to and people must come to understand that what was presented was a Yatch that was propagated by the Naval authorities and people claimed the president wanted a yacht for his comfort. That is not true. It was part of the equipment the Navy needed to function. People have also made reference to the presidential jet. I think the president was not really interested in any presidential jet. It is because of the state of the available aircraft. The aircraft are what you will not even want your enemy to fly in. It is a case of having many aircraft with none in a flying state. What he did was to sell some of the aircraft to buy a replacement. What was even procured was not a brand new aircraft. It was not even his desire to buy another aircraft. No citizen in the world wants to hear that his president died in an aircraft. I think these are security issues, and you must safeguard the sovereignty of your country. The president represents that sovereignty.

You also attested to the fact that Mr. President came with certain policies, some of which have come with severe economic hardship on the part of the people. What are your views on those reforms?

Honestly, I am one of those who have seen pain in the lives of Nigerians. So many Nigerians are struggling to feed on a daily basis. This is reality. I have visited the markets myself and I have also shared what the government should do in the New Year. I think Mr. President is working on that. We also cannot do without the partnership of the state governments and the local governments. Now that the local governments are operating with full autonomy, one is expecting them to key into the drive of the Federal Government in reducing anguish, pain and poverty in the lives of our people. The issue of hardship is real, the issue of poverty is real, the issue of suffering of Nigerians is real. The government is doing everything to take  them out of pain. Insecurity is expensive because it requires a lot of money to contain. What is most important is the judicious use of available resources because there is no substitute for human life and the president has a constitutional duty to maintain lives and property. So, anything the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu will do to protect the lives of Nigerians, he will do, no matter the cost; no matter what it will take.

The issue of insecurity remains ever present, do you think this government has capacity to win the war?

How we address the issue still goes down to the issue of agriculture. The government must be deliberate. The federal and state governments must be intentional about it and sufficient funds must be put in place to drive those mechanised processes. If not, it will be a case of removing fuel subsidy and leaving a vast majority of Nigerians in a basket of poverty. This the government must do, and do it deliberately and intentionally, to take the people  out of poverty and return them to winning ways.

A recent report indicated that the payment of ransom to kidnappers and bandits hit the trillion of naira mark as a sign that a lot still has to be done in the area of security in the country.

Insecurity is a universal concept. There is insecurity in Benin, Niger, Ghana, Togo and Cameroun. Nigeria is surrounded by countries with very porous borders. However, we are working with our partners in these countries to see to it that these issues are addressed. You can agree that the issue of Boko Haram has been brought to minimal and controllable level. Banditry has also been tackled. I have always said that insecurity is not something you address over the shelf. The cost of one bomb is over $200,000 and so if government drops four of these bombs, that is close to the budget of a state.

A few individuals remain adamant on their opposition to the Tax Reform Bills now before the National Assembly, despite the consistent clarifications being made by the authorities on the huge benefits if the bills become laws…

I think the resentment has to do with knowledge gap. There is a misconception from some of our brothers from the North. It is not the North as a region because those resisting the bills are minute in number, powerful though. The Tax Reform is targeted at improving the life of the common man, whether in the South or the North. A lazy governor will definitely resist such, why? It is because the tax reform is premised on hard work of individual states. If you are bringing so much to the table, that reform favours you, but for governors who want to go to Abuja for allocation and go back home and relax without doing anything, such governors will not be happy. When you look at the context of those Tax Reform Bills, you will see that they speak positively to the average man on the streets. It has taken the yoke of tax from him and placed the benefits on hardworking sub-regional governments. The tax is more about where the product is consumed, not about where the product is produced. So, it is more of a advantage to Lagos. It will trigger states to work more on consumption level in their states.

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