President Tinubu’s tax reform policy would deepen the deprivation of working-class people, reduce our purchasing power and push us further into personal debts for almost everything we need to survive. This is the wall the regime is pushing us as working people to in Nigeria.
But there is no clear response from the NLC and TUC.They have not presented any action plan of resistance. The claim of the government that workers earning around N1 million per annum, or N83,000 per month will be exempt from the Pay As You Earn (PAY) tax has little meaning when the national minimum wage is a paltry N70,0000.00
The indirect tax on goods would further impoverish those working in the informal economy. Indirect tax on goods would reduce the amount of what they can buy to resell. This is a sector where there are up to 60 million working people seeking survival. And they do not have the leverage of their representative organisations and federation being involved in the tripartite system used for negotiating the national minimum wage.
We have a long fight to take on and it must be a collective one. It is disturbing that rather than concentrating on how the tax reform would affect us all as citizens, different sections of the ruling class in the country are spinning the narrative to serve their barely veiled interests.
They are shaping the media along the lines of regional divides. The ruling class of the north who have enjoyed from the deprivation of working-class people in the North and the vulnerability of the poor Northern masses caused by the policies these same ruling class faction have implement are frowning at this reform. They have over the years sat on the allocation to these regions without extending its benefit to the masses.
The Southern factions of the ruling class are supportive because this means more allocations and revenue for them to further divert without visible impact on the lives of the poor working people. This would not translate to any positive development in the southern regions, as is clear from the antecedents of this ruling class.
However, this is not to antagonise the fair redistribution of the national wealth based on the contribution each region makes to it nor am I making an argument that the current revenue system be maintained. After all, the masses have not benefitted in any ways from this system, neither would the people’s living condition become better under the proposed system.
The point being made is that for as long as the productive capacities of the Nigerian economy are in the hands of the ruling class, they will only be interested in making profits at the expense of working-class people. They will fight over the sharing of these profits and taxes in whatever form, hiding behind lies that they are doing it in the interest of people from their ethnic backgrounds, regions or states of the federation. We should not allow them to fool us.
Only we, as working people of all ethnicities, can fight for our own interests as a class. These interests can only be articulated and fought for by a mass-based movement of working-class people . Ours is not to pick a side between the North and South factions of the ruling class. We must rather stand united under the banner of our common interest as the poor working class.
by Lekan SONEYE
