There’s a news story I read recently bordering on contract fraud which sounded like a plot line lifted from a crime novel.
Would you believe that a project supposed to be completed within 24 months took the Federal Ministry of Works 5 years to pay only 15 percent of the contract sum? Yes, you heard that right. A road contract for the construction and rehabilitation of the 41-kilometre Ijebu-Igbo-Ita-Ibadan Road was awarded to a construction company named DC Engineering Ltd for the sum of N9 billion. But before they were able to release the 15 percent mobilisation fund of N1.3 billion, it took the Federal Ministry of Works five years (from 2018 to 2023.)
No brainer to say that nothing like meaningful progress would go on concerning the construction and rehabilitation of the road in question. In short, that the project was halted for over five years after it was awarded was a source of extreme concern for the affected constituents. Why was there such an extreme tardiness in payment of mobilisation fund?
The company, DC Engineering, had actually requested for the contract sum to be reviewed upward to N14 billion. The request was promptly denied.
Now DC Engineering Ltd had gone ahead to accuse officials of the Federal Ministry of Works of inflating that same road contract from N9 billion to N54.3 billion.
It transpired that the Ministry re-awarded the same contract to another company, Areatech Construction Ltd at the sum of N54.3 billion. Now a representative of the Federal Ministry said they terminated the contract of DC Engineering since December 2022. Mind-boggling? This was a contract awarded under the supervision of Babatunde Fashola as Federal minister.
This matter is presently before the House of Representative Ad hoc Committee Investigative hearing.
This story raises a storm of questions: Why was the request from DC Engineering for upward review of the contract sum refused? Why did it take upward of five years to pay the 15 percent mobilisation fund – stretching up to 2023? Why was the contract of DC Engineering terminated since December 2022 without their awareness? Why was this same contract re-awarded to another company at the sum of N54.3 billion?
Now let’s take a mental journey to that Ijebu-Igbo-Ita-Ibadan Road, and recoil at seeing the deplorable condition of a road that is nothing but a death-trap.
With no alternative viable route, commuters would be forced to endure the extreme agony of travelling on that treacherous road to their markets, to work, and to do business.
Now everyday these commuters would be ventilating their frustration, bewilderment and cursings at government’s insensitivity and untrustworthiness. What have they done to deserve this plight? Try as hard as they could, it doesn’t get easier to witness injuries, mangled bodies and deaths resulting from vehicle accidents on the deplorable road. Everyday, they leave home with prayers in their hearts for survival, and returning home is considered a big feat, a great blessing from the benevolent God!
Now when you tell these same long-suffering people, abandoned to provide their basic amenities for themselves, and not daring to hope for any fair deal from a corrupt government in terms of a decent road; when you tell them about the need for voluntary compliance with payment of their taxes, they’d see you as a mad man.
They would even see the need to evade payment of their taxes to a government they so much despise as something smart, ethical and responsible to do. They would not see the threat of being punished for tax evasion as something of considerable weight. They are angry. They are discouraged. Uncared for. All they see with seething rage is government corruption, avarice and tyranny.
So it’s true what tax professionals say about government corruption being the major cause of low tax morale.
The practice of corruption remains a big problem in Nigeria. Every public attempt to curb or dismantle corruption so far has failed to yield the necessary, beneficial fruit.
Those who pretend to fight it end up being the perpetrators and beneficiaries of corruption.
Yet the general consensus narrated unfortunately not with an air of resolve but resignation is that unless Nigeria kills corruption, Nigeria would be killed by corruption!
Surely corruption is so endemic, so ingrained and normalised as a cultural predilection that the idea of having to defeat it sounds quixotic.
Yet the grave consequences of corruption such as poverty, lack of infrastructural development, lack of jobs, political instability, the rising rate of violent crimes etc are obvious.
Where public accountability and transparency are absent, large-scale corruption is inevitable. When the government is perceived to be very corrupt, the tax morale is drastically lowered.
With less tax revenue, government revenue is negatively affected.
Corruption can come in the forms of embezzlement, extortion, contract fraud, bribery, nepotism, cronyism, money laundering etc. Because it increases inequality, corruption is harmful to Nigeria’s political, economic and social development. No doubt, it also discourages foreign direct investment.
With corruption affecting the growth potential of the economy, invariably the size of the projected tax-base is reduced.
Experts have also noted that until Nigeria deals with tax fraud, fighting corruption would be a mirage.
Government corruption has life-threatening consequences. This was underscored by David Umahi, current Federal Minister of Works, who said workers in the ministry had ‘blood on their hands’ for the number of people who died in road accidents because of their failure to conduct necessary supervision of road contracts. This lack of necessary supervision has resulted in contractors, both expatriate and local, getting away with using substandard materials, outdated and inadequate machinery to construct roads. Delays and low quantity become the unpleasant results. The Federal minister warned that Nigerians would no longer allow themselves to be cheated and endangered by these unscrupulous contractors.
Talk about political instability, government corruption is also the culprit. It was reported by Business Day newspaper that the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC’s) N105.25 billion budget for acquiring BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) surpassed the estimated market cost by 30.4 percent. This sparked a major discussion among the public, many of whom felt very disappointed that the huge amount budgeted for INEC’s execution of the February 25 presidential poll was not commensurate.To reconcile the underwhelming performance of the electoral umpire with its huge funding, corruption was fingered.
To achieve the aim of Taiwo Oyedele’s Tax Reform Committee of transforming the ‘tax system to support sustainable development and achieve a minimum of 18 percent tax-to-GDP ratio within the next 3 years without stifling investment or economic growth,’ the government must clean house. This is to ensure that tax evasion among the citizens is thoroughly discouraged, and consequently exterminated.
I was reading the Bible the other day; and it hit me that both tax collection and tax payment constitute a SACRED DUTY.
According to the Bible, there are two reasons why people should flee from tax evasion.
(1) To avoid being penalised by the government.
(2) To have a clear conscience.
Because the government bears the official instruments of coercion purposefully, if you refuse to pay taxes, you can expect the weight of punishment to fall on you.
To be a tax evader makes one to be a carrier of bad conscience. If you are able to escape punishment from government for tax evasion, you can’t escape from a bad conscience.
So every responsible governmental leader who institutes a taxation system acts on behalf of God. Seeing that governmental tax system constitute a sacred duty, government has no room to accommodate corruption.
Five Ways For Government To Clean House:
(1) Government must encourage whistle-blowers who expose corrupt activities.
(2) The public sector must be kept accountable, honest and transparent.
(3) Government workers must be constantly tutored to act always in the public interest.
(4) Government must do all in its power to stamp out tribalism and nepotism from the public sector.
(5) Through proper taxation system, illicit or illegitimate wealth in the hands of citizens must be exposed, punished and discouraged.
