By Eyitayo Ande
Every discerning Nigerian, not just experts in economic and financial matters, know the reasons why our country has been struggling economically and running up debts unabatedly and at an alarming rate. Not just because of the corruption in our polity which has loomed so large over this country and assumed a frightening crescendo that has damaged our national integrity in the international system, but essentially because spanning several years, our liquidity position has been in a dire situation. Regrettably, our nation has been unable to steadily drive the generation of sufficient revenues to fund our annual Appropriations in a manner that will drastically and substantially reduce our deficit spending time and time again.
My position has always been that our nation’s future is beyond oil. No doubt, we must efficiently administer the natural resources bequeathed to us by God to maximise the full value accruable, which we are fortunate to have as other countries lack what we have or have a very tiny fraction of what we have. Nevertheless, we cannot continue to rely on their sale proceeds for the bulk of our fiscal and budgetary revenues – it is unsustainable and a recipe for disaster.
The international markets where they are traded are very volatile and can swing within a very short period just like it is expected to be shaken by the trade war Donald Trump seemed to have ignited with his “Reciprocal tariffs” economic stance on exports from the European Union, China, Canada, Mexico, and a host of other countries coming to the US. There is a general saying that, ‘when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers’. Simply put, when superpowers engage one another in ‘economic and trade fisticuffs’, oftentimes, it is fringe players like Nigeria and other developing countries that suffer.
The cheering news however, is that it appears the administration of Bola Tinubu has taken steps to truly walk the talk to diversify our revenues away from natural resources to other sources like taxes with the appointment of the tax czar, a man that, in just under two years of leadership, has created a watershed moment by imprinting his footsteps in the federal agency that he leads, refusing to be defined by the conception of others – especially of his predecessors. He is showing he has so much imagination and as a public servant serving at the pleasure of the President, he plays a titanic role in this government’s economic approach to achieve economic sustainability – surpassed 2023 revenue generation by a whopping 76 percent (12.37 trillion naira to 21.6 trillion naira), a 2024 achievement which was 11 percent over and above a target of 19.4 trillion naira set for the year under review.
I must emphasise that it looks like Zacchaeus Adedeji, who has been transformative and earned the respect and admiration of virtually everyone in the tax agency and the country at large, is the long-awaited change and problem solver Nigeria has been clamouring and yearning for to reorganise our tax ecosystem, cut the red tapes by reducing the bureaucracy, and drive the elimination of all waste and frauds which have been widely reported to abound in the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), which he currently presides over.
A year ago, a video was widely shared on social media titled, “Moment Rich by Humility”, where the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narenda Modi, was a guest at a gathering comprising of young men and women – many were teenagers. As all the participants sat on the floor awaiting the arrival of Modi to take up a lone chair planted right at the centre, just in front of the participants, who by this time were already looking anxious, he came in with resounding cheers from the people and went straight for the chair. Lifted it with his left hand and handed it over to one of the organisers; a nicely dressed young man – well-suited. Thereafter, Modi sat on the floor with these people and beckoned those at the rear to move nearer to sit with him.
Seeing this video on LinkedIn, I wrote on my page, ‘How else can one define exemplary, purposeful, strong and quality leadership other than this awesome demonstration of equality and empathy by PM, Mr. Modi? No wonder India has doubled her GDP from USD 1.87 trillion in 2014 when Mr. Modi assumed leadership to USD 3.73 trillion in 2023 (making them the 5th biggest economy in the world), and is unsurprisingly, in line with IMF projections, on the path to become a $5 trillion economy in 3-4 years. Leadership is everything! Painfully, in Nigeria, what we have is a massive leadership deficit!!’
Drawing a parallel, the exact type of leadership shown by the Indian PM – considering his fellow citizens not any less than him, is seen being demonstrated by Zacchaeus Adedeji in FIRS. True leadership is being fair to all – treating everyone without bias! Bishop David Oyedepo said: “Those who truly fear God will be fair to men”.
Two months ago, there was a huge media buzz drawing a significant amount of public attention where the members of staff of FIRS trooped out en masse and were captured on video taking over the street leading to the headquarters of FIRS to herald the arrival of their executive chairman. They sang, danced, and celebrated the unprecedented welfare packages approved for them. His influence is said to be re-writing the 70-year history of this agency. The excitement on display by these staff possibly points to a twisted tale of fraud which existed before his arrival, which made their morale reach rock bottom, akin to a people being pried loose from the grip of long-term ‘taskmasters’ who have denied them what rightfully belongs to them while holding them down for years, a course of events which perhaps changed with the emergence of a new leader. I believe Zacchaeus communicated a cultural message with the staff welfarism which was; ‘I am not any better than any of you and I am because you are.’
There’s a saying in Yoruba, “Omo eni iba joni, a ba yo” – this literally means it will be a thing of joy for a parent, should a child pick traits, behaviours, and semblance of the parent. For President Tinubu, he doesn’t have to worry over this statement, like most parents do. Just the same way he was reported to have assembled a team of sound and young individuals – known as “Lagos Boys”, who have transformed Lagos state since the advent of the Fourth Republic, he will probably be extremely delighted that his ‘son’; Zacchaeus, is following in his footsteps of having a penchant for identifying extremely cerebral, dutiful, and sound professionals to form a formidable team to achieve shared vision and objectives. The drive of President Tinubu and Adedeji regarding the tax reforms speaks to their deal-making abilities. They are on the verge of pulling through what no administration in over four decades has thought of doing, probably because of the political blowback which could lead to a myriad of social, political, and ethnic issues past leaders felt may accompany the process.
The current tax laws have not helped us in any way and some people were fighting to keep it that way. Defending the status quo? Howbeit, since he took over the reins at the agency, it has shown that it has extraordinary courage that is peerless to challenge the state of affairs and replace the several-decades-old-archaic tax laws affecting the efficiency of the nation’s tax system, with a set of new tax laws. It must be noted that a strong leader is known by the kind of team he/she assembles and his/her achievement is contingent on the cumulative achievements of the team. To this end, kudos must be given to Zacchaeus, who is already setting the standards sky high, for pinpointing and headhunting Taiwo Oyedele, a man with equally matchless courage and character to head the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, which is poised to change the tax landscape of this country just as I posited in my piece on TheCable titled, ‘Nigeria’s liquidity problems and the tax reform bills’, published December 23, 2024. I have heard people say Oyedele knows so much about our nation’s tax terrain that he explains the tax reform bills effortlessly, so much so that even a primary school pupil would have a grasp of the subject matter.
There’s a lot going on in this agency. A section of the media has freaked out about the sudden resurgence of the agency – not out of heightened fear but of excitement. For many, the new and purposeful leadership has awakened the agency from the slumber that has characterised it for several years resulting in its helplessness to meet government’s objectives – drive tax revenues to boost the nation’s liquidity. Nonetheless, Nigerians might need so much to cope with the troubling truth of the grisly details of the scale of inefficiencies and venality which have been reported to exist for far too long in this agency and which may have spiralled out of control, constituting a massive drain on the nation’s public finances.
It is therefore hoped that the executive chairman is aware of what he is up against and will take a more dramatic and drastic approach to curtail these systemic issues, leveraging modern and state-of-the-art technology to block all the loopholes and leakages through which the country has been losing money. As a matter of urgency, he would need to square more with his team to set up a swarm of whizkids who are adept in the use of AI to find where the tax monies are, shine the spotlight on the prevalent leakages to stop the economic bleed, and then get the monies in.
The nation’s tax czar has had his fair share of backlash. Right from his appointment as honourable commissioner of finance in Oyo State at the very young age of 33 years old, his capabilities and capacity to function and deliver on the job were questioned. Also, accusations have been levelled against him, with some media outlets taking a swipe at him to suggest that he is colluding to push a sectional and ethnic agenda with the tax reform bills, which for me is crying wolf and at best, comical.
In all these, he has proven his critics wrong that he does not fit the bill or the profile of a non-performer or a visionless professional. His passion seems to be in overhauling and streamlining revenue systems, it is therefore not entirely unexpected to see him replicate at the federal level, what he did in Oyo State. Balance is being returned to FIRS with some level of reasonableness and common sense, taking historic steps to restructure our tax climate to enable us to compete favourably with OECD countries whose average tax-to-GDP ratio is about 34 percent – with little or no natural resources like Nigeria. He would have to implement a robust and efficient system whereby it is almost impossible to evade taxes, or make them incorrectly or untimely.
The wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, said: “To save tax-payers money, it comes down to two things; competence and caring.” From the way he has managed the agency thus far, it is clear that he possesses and showcases these two attributes needed to stop the continuous drain on our country’s monetary resources. Intriguingly, his performance within this short stint at the agency is already earning him recommendations to contest the Oyo state governorship election in 2027.
However, he was said to have declined, choosing to stick with his responsibilities at FIRS, a decision I want to believe will go down well with not only the staff of his agency but with a lot of Nigerians who think that in about two dozen months of playing key roles in the Tinubu administration – first as SA to the president on revenue and then as the tax czar, he is driving an unparalleled agenda with an extraordinary masterstroke, the likes not seen possibly in modern-day Nigerian history.
Finally, Zacchaeus, the tax collector, a man driven, motivated, and committed to public service, is in the driver’s seat of the nation’s tax agency. Some people, including the Yoruba, believe that the name you bear defines who you are throughout life. I truly believe he’s walking in his purpose and living out the true meaning of his name! His approach suggests that like good detectives who know their onion, he has set machinery in motion to follow all the tax monies.
In the same way PM Modi is almost tripling India’s economy – from $1.87 trillion to $4.3 trillion now, FIRS under the empathic leadership of Adedeji, just like Modi, can triple the nation’s tax-to-GDP ratio – from 10 percent to 30 percent. This will wipe out deficit spending and increase total annual spending exponentially.
There is however a raging concern. With the growing list of structural and systemic issues the country is grappling with, for which there seems to be no end in sight, will the government deploy the superfluous of tax revenues the agency is set to generate in the coming years to good use? Ensure that every tax-payer naira raised is utilised judiciously in building infrastructure, and to stimulate domestic production in key economic sectors to spur production and productivity which is essential to further boost tax receipts.
Furthermore, Nigerians from all walks of life hope that like the Biblical Zacchaeus, he will end the era of corruptive activities inherent in the system where the bulk of the tax revenues end up in private pockets, usher in a period of wealth distribution to reduce the income inequality – the rich, super wealthy, and public officials regardless of status paying their fair share of taxes, and bring restoration and economic stability to the poor and struggling Nigerians
However, the question on the minds of many Nigerians is that; will he spare no effort with the onerous responsibility on his shoulder, to not only achieve the expectations of the Nigerian people to drain the swamp, contribute to easing their economic pains and help them live quality life, but go the extra mile to surpass them? Time will tell!
Ande, a financial and political economy analyst, writes from Lagos and can be reached via eyitayoande@gmail.com
