…Says claims of non-consultation false lInsists bills will revolutionise taxation for general good

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

The Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, NECA, has said critics of the executive tax reform bills before the National Assembly were merely cannibalising the document for personal interests.

According to NECA, if the bills become law, they have the potential to revolutionise taxation for the good of all.

In an exclusive interview with Vanguard yesterday, Director General of NECA, Mr Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, countered claims of non-consultation of relevant stakeholders before the bill was sent to the National Assembly, describing the claims as far from the truth.

He said: “We think there is quite a lot of misinformation about the bill. Again, a lot of people are also not really taking the time to study the bill to get to the core of the bill.

“There has been so much misinformation and disinformation concerning the bill. Everybody is just cannibalising the bill from the perspective of their interests. This is quite unfortunate.

“On the private sector, we were part of the presidential committee, and through our representatives, we participated actively in the work of the committee.

“Even the chairman of the committee has said rightly that the bill is not perfect, but there are opportunities for amendment.

“We think the direction the committee has taken to continue to engage, to continue to inform is the right direction. We just hope that national interest will prevail in the long run, and then we will move forward.

“The issue of non-consultation is far from the truth. We knew the level of consultation that was made, both online and physical consultations. The committee moved round. We knew the work that was done within the context of engagement.

‘’It will be far from the truth for anybody to say there was no consultation. We think that is far from the truth.

“The reality of the bill jolted everybody back from their lethargy. And when everybody decided to wake up from their slumber, then they saw that this bill was actually going to happen. But to say there was no consultation is not correct.

“It is one thing for the committee to say, we want to discuss this with you and it is another thing for the chief executive officer to send an officer that could not take decisions or adequately distill the bill and do a report that the CEO will work with. But to say consultations were not done is far from the truth.”

On the potential of the bill, he said: “It reduces some burden on the average Nigerians. It reduces some burden on some level of workers that are not earning to a certain level. It puts more money in the hands of Nigerians and the more money that it puts in the hands of Nigerians, the bigger their capacity to purchase.

“It also expands the scope in such a way that it reduces collection rates significantly. It creates buffers for the organised private sector . Though, we have some other issues that we have raised concerning the bill but significantly, it addresses those critical issues that we all currently face.

“One of the biggest things it will achieve for us is being able to block leakages and have a focused context of collection. Let us give an example. Customs, as of today, is collecting revenue.

‘’What is the business of Customs collecting revenue? Its work is to do the evaluation, to evaluate the import duty. They are not to collect.

“Naturally, you expect those that will be impacted, those organisations, individuals, whose stock in trade has been to benefit from what has not been working for all of us.

‘’You won’t expect them to just sit down, fold their arms and see the source of their livelihood taken from them.

“But as I said, if this country wants to move forward, we just need to make some very difficult decisions. If not, we will find ourselves crying about the effects, but we are feeding the cause. That is a simple analysis of the whole situation.”