The director General of the Progressives Governors Forum, Salihu Lukman, has said that APC leaders must take advantage of the current Value Added Tax debate to take ownership of it’s achievements, which the fact of improved VAT collections in the country represent.
The PGF DG stated this in a statement on Friday.
Mr Lukman posited that the controversy around whether Value Added Tax (VAT) should be centrally collected by the federal government or decentralised so that state governments are the ones to collect, beyond anything, is a test about the type of democracy Nigerians want.
He said: “that Nigerians are debating whether it is states or federal government that should collect VAT signify some progress, which has to do with the fact that there is an increase in what is being generated from VAT.”
He noted that Nigerians can conveniently dismiss the role of APC led federal government in making it possible for the remarkable improvement in VAT collection in the country such that today, it has become an attractive variable in the struggle for resource control by state governments, but the reality however is that credit must go to the APC led federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Salihu Lukman says that there’s significant increase in VAT in the country between 2015 and 2020 which confirmed improved efficiency and reduced corruption in the process of collection and management of Nigeria’s public finances.
He believes there’s need to develop Nigerian democracy so that political parties in the country can initiate pro-people and pro-poor public policies, and not cheap sentiments that can be disadvantageous to citizens, especially the poor, is imperative.
