Buhari, Sanusi, NCC and the Contradictions of Nigeria By Reno Omokri

7 years ago

Buhari, Sanusi, NCC and the Contradictions of Nigeria By Reno Omokri

The contradictions of Nigeria under this administration are quite pathetic. You have a state government that cannot trace the killers of the wife of an evangelist beheaded in broad day light in Kano even though the event was caught on camera, then you have another state government that is able to trace killers of hundreds of its own citizens to Cameroon and Niger and when they traced them-wait for it-they did not apprehend them. Instead they offered them money not to kill again. No. this is not an excerpt from Steven King's latest horror book. This is an excerpt of life in the new and improved Nigeria!
And the contradictions continue to pour in.

On Monday the 5th of November, 2916, President Buhari complained about the demands that Nigerians were making on him and ended his lamentations by asking Nigerians not to make expensive demands of him.

A president who built an expensive helipad for his personal use in Daura with taxpayers money now asks taxpayers not to make expensive demands! Indeed, #ChangeBeginsWithMe!

If President Muhammadu Buhari knew the demands of the office were too much for him then why did he contest for the office four times?

If I were to advice the President, I would tell him to choose his words carefully because his defensive words today may be offensive words tomorrow.

And yet another contradiction is the ugly news from the NCC. When the madness from the Nigerian Communications Commission reared its ugly head in the form of the attempt by the Buhari administration to hike the tariffs for GSM and Internet services, I immediately saw it as a desperate attempt by the federal government to source for funds to pay the 200,000 N-Power graduate employees it had promised to employ.

After repeated promises to employ them and even more repeated delays in the date they were to resume, the Vice President eventually set a resumption date for the scheme as 1st December, 2016, the same date that the federal government through the NCC had set as the start date for the new tariffs.

Coincidence? As a life long student of mathematics, I am convinced that there are no coincidences and this latest 'coincidence' only crystallizes my belief.

Like someone said on Twitter, other than Nigeria, I can not imagine another nation that will devalue its currency, increase fuel and electric cost yet leave wages the same!

Little did I know at the time I was reading that tweet that the government was toying with another tariff increase.

And when it suspended the data tariff hike, after public outcry, the NCC said it did so to enable it do consultations? My response to them is that they should not waste their money. I, Reno Omokri, have consulted on their behalf and free of charge at that and here is the verdict-Nigerians reject it!

It is wrong really for officials whose electricity tariff, fuel and GSM plans are paid for by taxpayers to increase fuel, power and GSM plans of the people!

In truly progressive nations, it is the regulator that forces telecommunications firms to lower prices. I am dumbfounded that in our case, the regulator is the one seeking an increase. I thought the federal government said they were going to spend their way out of the recession? From the look of things, their plan seems to be to tax their way out of it!

In my opinion, rather than direct GSM firms to hike rates, the NCC should invest in free public Wi-Fi for the advancement of knowledge in Nigeria. Free wifi would boost the type of thrift and industry that Nigeria needs to come out of her present recession.

It will enable unemployed youths gain access to a treasure trove of publicly available information that they can then apply to creative ventures that will lead to jobs, businesses and vocations. The human mind must be engaged and if it is not positively engaged then it is a must that it will be negatively engaged.

And of course I sympathize with the Buhari administration on its need to source for funds to pay for N-Power and other poverty alleviation initiatives. However, they should not tax the poor to provide for the poor. You tax the rich to provide for the poor.

On the second of December 2016, Forbes magazine reported that China has begun implementing a 10% additional tax (additional to regular sales tax) on luxury cars.

In justifying the tax, the Chinese ministry of finance released a statement in which it said
“In order to guide rational consumption and promote energy saving and emission reduction, the State Council [cabinet] has approved a consumption tax on luxury cars.”
Nigeria's leaders expose their hypocrisy when they turn up for public events in their long convoys of very expensive and foreign cars!

This is a country that manufactures cars. Nigerian automobile manufactures now make bulletproof cars (partially made in Nigeria) so there is no reason for anyone, including the President, to drive in long convoys of obscenely expensive Mercedes Benz and BMWs. The government's Naira hardly circulates within Nigeria. Rather, our government officials make the dollar, euro or Japanese Yen stronger by their purchase of all things foreign!

Rather than increase the tariff on GSM and Internet rates, the federal government should direct the Federal Inland Revenue Service to take a cue from China and tax the super rich who import luxurious cars "in order to guide rational consumption" in Nigeria. If China, which is in a much better financial position than Nigeria, is doing it, what are we waiting for?

But instead of taxing the rich, the FIRS announced that it is about to implement a policy where Nigerians would have to show a tax clearance certificate before being able to apply for an international passport.

I mean what type of authoritarianism is this? An international passport is a right not a privilege. A government cannot deny it to its people. Even Nigerian citizens who become naturalized citizens of The UK, the USA, Canada and other such nations apply for passports without having to produce anything other than their identification and either a marriage or birth certificate yet in their own nation by birth their government is coming up with a hare brained idea of requiring tax certificate before a passport can be applied for!

Rather than target the long suffering masses of Nigeria, wealthy Nigerians can and should pay their fare share! We are all witnesses to the larger than life lifestyles of the rich. First Class cabins on British Airways are still regularly