Nigeria’s Corporate Taxes among Highest Globally, Says Atiku’s Economic Adviser

 

The Economic Adviser of the Atiku Campaign Organisation, Mr. Mustapha Chike-Obi, on Monday said at 30 per cent, corporate taxes in Nigeria are among the highest in the world.

The former chief executive officer of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) said this when he appeared as a guest on ‘The Morning Show’ on Arise TV, a THISDAY sister broadcast station.

He argued that the trend globally showed that in modern economies, corporate taxes have been on the decline.

“Nigeria’s corporate taxes are 30 per cent and among the highest in the world. If you look at all the countries in the world, there is only one or two countries that have higher corporate tax than Nigeria.

“So, it is in keeping with modern economies to reduce corporate taxes because people still pay taxes at the individual level,” he said while responding to a question on the policy document that was launched yesterday by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

Continuing, Chike-Obi said: “You have to have a policy around certain principles, and the key principle in this document is a smaller, more efficient federal government.

“So everything you see is streamlined to accomplish a more efficient government. So this document is based on how we are going to prove these issues.

“The most pressing issue in Nigeria today is unity. How are we going to bring Nigerians together?

“The problem we have had with this present government is that their policies are not coherent.”

He argued that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has some meaningful policies “but they don’t fit together.

“So if you look at the Next Level document which has been released, it talks about a much bigger government. The government is doing everything.

“So we have enough evidence to judge this government and Nigerian people have made their judgements. What we need to focus on is what we are going to do better.

“So, we would restructure as much as we can and then we would go to the National Assembly and then do the constitution amendments that are necessary as well as what we can without the constitution amendments.

“So, we want to create a smaller government where everybody is represented.”

Chike-Obi noted that presently, Nigeria produces between 1.7 million and two million barrels of crude oil daily.

“We are proposing 20,000MW of electricity which is even more ambitious than people think. But we can do it. The problem we have in Nigeria today is that we shoot for very low targets so when they say they want GDP of two per cent next year; we are going for double digit GDP by 2021.

“That might sound ambitious to you, but we are a big country, and we would do more things as long as we have the political will and leadership to do it, and so what we are bringing to the table is ambitious targets.

“We believe Nigeria can generate 100,000 MW of electricity in the next 10 years, we believe our roads can be fixed, I think we can do a much more than people think we can do, and we would accomplish all these,” he stated.

Responding to a question on why Atiku, in the policy document based some of his projections on a six-year plan, which has since heightened speculation that the PDP candidate may be targeting two terms, Chike-Obi explained that “the reason we used 2025 in the document is because we believe in a continuous government. We are planning for his successor to continue, if we can.

He said: “One of the problems in this country is that one government does certain things, another government comes and stops what the previous government was doing.”