If we Nigerians were Americans who are given to so much hype and exaggeration in all their ordinary and not so ordinary lives, our journalists would have by now codenamed the year 2026 as Tinubu’s Great Tax Year. This is because so much hype or hysteria has gone on in the public space about how this government of Tinubu intends to give every Nigerian a tax identity number as from January 1, 2026 as a way of bringing all or more Nigerians into the tax bracket. No single Nigerian, no matter how low or mighty he or she is, the story goes, will escape taxation. Except you will not live in this country from January next year, some boast, to all add effect to their knowledge of Tinubu’s taxatry or taxatricks ,if there is anything like these in English or Tinubunomics.
I know that there is so much noise about this intention to drag as many Nigerians as possible into the tax dragnet because Nigerians, as is true of all peoples of the world, do not want to pay tax at all to any government whether good or bad. Everyone here wants to be left alone to enjoy the little or much that comes their way.
As a part of this plan, the news has been given that prostitutes, known elegantly as Runs Girls in Nigeria and their other half brothers in crime and criminality known, called and referred euphemistically to as Yahoo Yahoo Boys, will also come into this great tax bracket.
I am not a tax administrator or a tax expert so I do not know how the income of these not so well regarded compatriots from this illicit activities will be calculated to ensure that they are correctly taxed,but I just guess that once anyone in Nigeria comes into Tinubu’s proposed tax registers it will not be difficult to know what to do to this fish that has come into the net. As your income begins to roll in from all sources, illicit or licit, all a tax administrator will do is to apply the percentage agreed upon on the person whether he or she is a reverend, a deceiver or a prostitute known elegantly as a runs girls or a hookup or a hookdown or a hooksideways. The administrator does not need to bother himself to know who your clients are in the case of the girls or who your victims are in the case of the Yahoo Yahoo Boys. He just applies the formula on you and gets the Tinubu share of the state from your earnings. Simple.
And this is where I am concerned. Tax is supposed to be on the legitimate earnings of a good citizen. But this tax is not aimed at calling on good citizens to do good things for the good and greatness of Nigeria. All it is concerned about is that the citizen should pay as long as he is doing anything even if what he or she does brings harm upon the nation. This is not good. As individuals living collectively in the nation called Nigeria, we cease to be treated strictly as individuals. We have become a body corporate. The activities of one individuals impacts on the other. As one yahoo yahoo boy in Kano, Lagos or Abuja deceives one European man or woman and collects all or a substantial portion of his or her wealth, all of Nigeria is guilty of that crime and any curse on that individual is a curse on the collective Nigerian body corporate.
That is why as a matter of principle, or a matter of religious principle, I do not think that I, Mr. Idang Alibi am ready to enjoy the benefits from the amenities which the taxation that comes from harlots and thieves who deceive honest people both home and abroad of their honest earnings or who pollute the lives of innocent people with their harlotry. Do the Tinubu tax people not know that the activities of harlots and thieves have a deleterious efforts on our nation building effort?
God says that harlotry and the proceeds of harlotry are cursed. He does not like the selling of someone’s body and the proceeds that come from doing so. He said emphatically that the proceeds of harlotry should not be given as an offering or tithe unto him.
This government in particular that is rightly or wrongly perceived as the most corrupt that Nigeria has ever had, must be seen to make much efforts to pay great attention to the activities of criminals and wrong doers of every hue.
Not many Nigerians know the spiritual impact of the activities of a people on their nation. This explains why not many Nigerians bother about the level of dishonesty and lack of integrity on the woes that have befallen our country. Since my retirement from the public service of our country, I have been engaged at small level with artisans and labourers of various callings and I am very frightened about the level of lack of honesty among them. Many of them do not believe that there is anything that should be done straight in our country. Give them any slight opportunity to do anything for you they believe that crookedness must be brought into it before they can ‘earn’ anything from it for themselves. The situation is so bad that I have come to believe that one of the main causes of the abandonment of many building projects in our country is due to this attitude of the various artisanal workers.
The cause of many collapsed or poorly executed building projects in Nigeria is also attributable to this state of mind of our construction workers and the great stealing and lying that is engraved in our system. If we continue with this mindset, I am so certain that we shall not become a great nation. No one is bewitching us. We are bewitching ourselves in the name of smartness. It is not smartness at all. We are all engaged in national self- hurt.
