Thread by @JeSuisNaija – “IT’S NEITHER BUHARI NOR ATIKU.” Adapted for #MYNEWNGR Movement
We will never have issues based national dialogue until the word ISSUE is properly contextualized.
Drilling it down to what issues are, the issue is, like bacteria, we all shit in the system where we feed. It is safer to just continue cursing one another.
On daily basis, it is likely 100 million out of 198 million Nigerians only think of how to undermine the system, even where the system is working.
Politicians who embezzle funds did not learn it at National Institute for Policy & Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos.
The society! We trained them.
Nigerians, if we want to discuss issues, here are issues:
■ For example, majority at Alimosho, the largest voting bloc in Lagos don’t pay for electricity. As their Senator, if you win first term by ignoring this scam, you will lose second term if you attempted changing it during your first term.
■ When we want Forex, we want it at official rate; but when we have dollars to change to Naira, It is to black market straight! When you are not mad. As hard as Forex was in 2015, Nigeria students’ enrolment in US grew from 9,494 to 10,674 in 2016, contributing $324 million to the US economy.
■ Tax is a very serious issue for discussion in US politics. When it came up that some may have dodged tax, we quickly turned it into APC-PDP ‘ping-pong.’ Everybody formed deafness when FIRS officially reported 6000 billionaires, and 800,000 companies have been evading tax.
If it ever happens that you question any person alleged to have evaded tax, who is a member of our religion, from our tribe, moves from an opposition party to the party we support, is our uncle, or knows your dad, you will hear reply like “Shebi Buhari doesn’t have WAEC.”
I have an employee that left his job because N1,200 payee was deducted from his N60,000 salary. Either poor or rich, most Nigerians hate any kind of talk about tax payments. Even people government employed to enforce tax, dodge it too. They are the ones that will teach you how to do it.
If you are a tax consultant in Nigeria and you don’t know how to prepare false statement of affairs, or management account, to file doctored annual returns, better go and learn and start UBER.
I have lost major businesses because I demanded for remittance receipts on Withholding Tax.
I have data to show ~62% of companies that received payment for Federal Government contracts between 1999 – 2011 did not pay tax on payment received, talk more of monies made, that government did not know about.
Yet, we want infrastructure and we are surprised government is borrowing to build it.
■ ASUU is on strike again. Apart from claims by TETFUND that each federal university has been receiving N1 billion every year for infrastructure development in the last few years, ask these academicians to provide properly audited accounts, you will begin to hear ‘cock & bull’ stories.
CBT Centres charge up to N6,500, but official JAMB fee is N4,000. If JAMB is remitting N7 billion on exams for 1.7million candidates, please estimate how much universities make from Post UTME, Diplomas, Post Grad, and other internally generated revenues. These are the issues we don’t want to talk about.
In a year, Ekiti University claimed it made N6 billion, but a federal institution in Lagos claimed it made less than N3 billion. Universities account abroad are made public. Ask OAU Ife to do same, you will see ritual pot at the entrance of the Senate the next day. I don’t know if TSA changed that.
If we open our universities for public scrutiny, a good number of ASUU members will be in jail.
■Apart from judges who collect bribe, let’s look at court registries; Ikoyi Federal High Court Registry, is very notorious in this regard. I challenge lawyers here to prove otherwise.
RULE OF LAW is a good cliché when government ask us to give account, but it’s OK for Melaye to dodge Court Summons.
■A lady told us, how she had a fight with another lady who was removing a full roll of toilet paper from the toilet at the new Port Harcourt airport, for her personal use.
■ We claim our institutions aren’t working, whereas we all wilfully sabotage them. It’s not common again to find INEC conniving to rig elections, unlike the days of Maurice Iwu. While INEC evolved using card reader, we have evolved into buying and selling votes, to bypass it.
N10 billion has been removed from the federal budget for education to fund elections. The biggest part of that election cost goes into securing ballot boxes from hijackers.
We are a difficult people!
We can together build A NEW NIGERIA, but we have to look inwards and let the change start with the man in the mirror.
#MYNEWNGR is a reorientation and not political movement – join our movement (#MYNEWNGR) through the following media;
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#MYNEWNGR Movement
Invite your friends and share widely with others, especially the youth, and together we shall build and create our own future.