VAT as unitarist fixation

Going by the snippets from the Budget 2020 presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly, it is obvious the president is forging ahead with his financial power grab. Can we deduce that the states and the National Assembly are watching from the sidelines in apparent helplessness?

Was this one of the issues that Prof Chukwuma Soludo steered clear of at his seminal Independence Day address at The Platform? I just wonder what more he could have added if he didn’t self-censor due to his recent appointment as a member of The Presidential Economic Advisory Council.

Very little of what Soludo presented is new. However, the fine details he presented leave no area of contention unaddressed. Nigerians love to quote Lee Kuan Yew only to do nothing about his observations. We have long ago run out of excuses. I can illustrate most of his concerns with settled analyses from my archives, personal experiences and those of others with emphasis on the engineering economy of Nigeria.

 Whatever pretensions I have about econometrics have come by induction, by paying close attention to the masters. Meanwhile, one must note that the many laws of nature, conservation of matter and energy, thermodynamics, specifically entropy, etc, must be satisfied NO MATTER WHAT! Failure to acknowledge that remains one of the reasons why, say the privatisation of the power sector was doomed to fail. It never really took off. I have shouted myself hoarse on this particular issue.

Oduche Azih,

Isolo, Lagos state

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