MPs seek aggressive duty collection to fund budget

Members of Parliament have agreed on the need for the executive to employ an aggressive strategy to ensure collection of tax so as to fund budget.

They said that most of the areas identified as revenue sources in the budget were no longer feasible as a result of dwindling oil prices in the global market and the fall in the value of the naira against major international currencies.

The Chief Whip of the Senate, Prof. Olusola Adeyeye, said “If we are going to move this country forward, we must go back to what we did in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe. Nobody in my village then would go to his farm until he could produce his tax receipt; we need ingenuity to bring this to pass. We must begin to tax things like cigarettes, alcohol, and if you beat your wife, you pay heavily.”

“Text messages cost N3.81 a page, if we ask just for N1 for a page of text message and we say that money belongs to the government, we will make billions. We must install toll points on the roads but that is not enough.”

He advised the leadership of the senate to sit down and come up with a plan to grow the country in all regards.