“Nigerians provide basic infrastructures for themselves despite paying high taxes” – AfDB president, Adesina laments
President of the African Development Bank, AfDB, Akinwumi Adesina has expressed displeasure in the situation where Nigerians are not provided with basic infrastructures despite paying high taxes.
Speaking on Thursday at the first national tax dialogue organized by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS), Adesina noted that Nigerians were among the top implicit taxpayers in the world. He explained that Implicit taxes are levies that are borne but are neither seen nor recorded.
He said in Nigeria, citizens provide electricity, road, security, water, among others, for themselves.
“We must also distinguish between nominal taxes and implicit taxes — Taxes that are borne but are not seen nor recorded. Truth be told, Nigerians pay one of the highest implicit tax rates in the world — way higher than developed countries,” he said.
“Think of it: they provide electricity for themselves via generators; they repair roads to their neighborhoods if they can afford to; there are no social security systems; they provide security for their own safety, and they provide boreholes for drinking water with their own monies. That in incredulous in itself. Boreholes are not the way to provide water in the 21st century. Every household should have pipe-borne water!
“Take for example that 86% of small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria spend $14 billion annually on diesel for generators. Nigeria’s companies lose on average 10% of sales because they do not have access to reliable and affordable electricity.
“Governments, over time, have simply transferred their responsibility to citizens. When governments or institutions fail to provide basic services, the people bear the burden — a heavy implicit tax on the population.”
that is true but only God can save us from our predicament…..
Nigerians are basically providing everything for themselves yet they happy. What can we do, when all government institutions have failed us
That is situation we found ourselves in the country, when the government left their responsibility to the citizens of the country that means that government is not responsible.
You need to loud it to the president’s hear wether he is going to listen to you, the way they are running the government in the country is good at all.
If Nigeria can have someone like you as a president, may be things will change for better. We need young and energetic people like you to move Nigeria forward.
Thank you sir for saying it just the way it is. Nigerians have never had it so bad and so rough in their over sixty years of independent as they are having it now under the government of Garba Shehu’s presidency and your namesake vice presidency Femi Adesina. A country without a president drifting into anarchy and failed state just to keep a particular tribe in power. Everything in the country is in the high side, fuel electricity tariff, food, transportation, fees, and so on. just name it. But our salaries are stagnated in a currency that has long lost its purchasing power and greatly devalued. Late Afrobeat king Fela aptly put it in one of his songs thus; Suffering and Smiling