“nobody wanted to pay tax, even when we asked people to be paying one thousand naira as tax nobody is willing”
Governor Nasir El-rufai of Kaduna has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has not remitted a dime to the Federation Account since the last quarter of 2021.
He made this known during the 12th Kaduna State Council of Health meeting held at the Umaru Musa Yar’adua Hall, Murtala Mohammed Square, Kaduna on Tuesday.
He said the federal government and states have been depending on import duties and taxes for the past two or three years.
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He quickly added thus, what is the wisdom behind spending N6 trillion on Subsidy, while the entire health budget of the Federal Government and all the 36 states of the Federation is not up to trillion naira.
Elrufai also noted that we spent N300 bn per annum to subsidise electricity which we hardly get.
According to him, the country needs to come out of its shell and know what it wants, saying, “since the last quarter of 2021, the NNPCL has not remitted a dime to the federation account because they are paying subsidy.
“We have depended only on import duties and taxes. This year, the Federal Government will spend N6 trillion on fuel subsidies, which is a quarter of the budget. This is more than the entire budget of states and local governments on health this year.
“We spent N300 billion per annum to subsidize electricity which we hardly get. We are subsidizing 50% of electricity supply. We have exchange rate of N400 to a dollar but if you want to buy dollar across the road at Hamdala Hotel, it costs N700.
“Some people would buy at N400 and sell at N700 costing us about N4 trillion per annum, that is one-sixth of the entire budget, which is more than the entire budget of education.
Citing example with Kaduna, he said,” there are 2 million people in Kaduna that are employed and 100,000 of them are civil servants. If we ask them to pay N10,000 per month each or N100,000 per annum we raise N200 billion as internally generated revenue, which is more than our capital budget for this year.
But he said, “nobody wanted to pay tax, even when we asked people to be paying one thousand naira as tax nobody is willing. we have to make choices as a country and as a people and stop being hypocritical”.
