The Northern Elders' Forum (NEF) has advised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to suspend the Tax Reform Bills before the National Assembly following the submission of the report of the committee it had constituted to study the bills.
The chairman, management board of the forum, A. M. Al-Amin Daggash, in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja yesterday, said following the committee's report, the forum had recommended that the federal government should immediately suspend the rush to implement the proposed tax reform bills to wisely use dialogue to allay all concerns, collect all quality contributions and critical inputs from cross sections of Nigerian stakeholders and then finally proceed to accommodate and redesign the sequencing of the implementation strategy.
" As a consumption tax which drastically reduces the purchasing power of citizens, fuels inflation and hikes in interest rates, no increase in VAT should be imposed pending the emergence into the national horizon of clear evidence of the promised economic recovery by the government," he said.
He said the proposed formula contained in the NTAB was not fair to the states where VAT revenue is generated as the consuming states are denied credit for what has been generated from them.
"Since VAT is a General Consumption Tax (GCT), the rule of attribution based on the location of consumption should be uniformly applied," he said.
He said since coming into office, the government of President Bola Tinubu had brazenly operated with a total contempt and disdain for any patriotic voice of dissent and a palpable proclivity for emasculating its imaginary opponents.
"Nowhere is this more abundantly evident than in the undemocratic way the government is openly arm-twisting the critical public to the sheepish acceptance of and the slavish submission to the highly toxic proposal it hurriedly packaged and euphemistically tagged, as, Tax Reform Bills," he added.
He said that it was necessary to reiterate that indeed, Nigerians in general and Northerners in particular were not really against the introduction of any form of good and meaningful reforms by those in positions of authority at the federal, state or local government levels.
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"Even though we shall remain very implacable in reaffirming that our practical experiences teaches us that going by global best practice, successful reforms are known to be underpinned by strict adherence to certain common cardinal characteristics of the public policy-making process," he added.
He said the Northern Elders' Forum made bold to say that the recently proposed Tax Reform Bills were clearly in breach with regards to adhering to the common characteristics of reforms and public policy-making process all over the world and in conformity with the global best practices.
