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Footprints of Dare: A Minister Retooling Youth and Sports Ministry For National Growth

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BY RAMON BALOGUN

August 21 2019-August 21 2020 marked an eventful year in the annals/diary of the Ministry of Youth and Sports Devt. At the epicentre of these events is Mr Sunday Dare, the Hon. Minister of Youth and Sports Devt. Since his assumption of office a year ago ( and even now) the Minister has redeemed his promise of placing Youth and Sports on an even keel of development – a feat never achieved by his predecessors.

Policies and initiatives have been consistently pursued and implemented, with evidential impacts and resonating implications in both sectors (Youth and Sports).

In the youth segment, the visionary Minister crafted the DEEL initiative/ programme to engage and keep Nigerian youths busy through Digital skills in various ICT courses such as Coding, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Programming etc and the Work Experience Programme.

Policies without the will to drive implementation, as they say, is useless and pointless: This is not so,  with the Youth and Sports Ministry under the watch of Mr Dare. Several engagements with corporate organizations that have bent for youth development programme led to working agreements/MoU between the Ministry and partnering entities such as IBM, AfDB, CBN, JUNIOR ACHIEVERS, WILLCO GROUP, NESTLE, MTN, GOOGLE.

These Partnerships plus it’s hanging fruits birthed 10,000 Nigerian Youths that were trained in 25 courses by the IBM; $100MN worth of support from the AfDB for DEEL implementation; inclusive of other bouquet programmes such as Coding for employment.

Worth mentioning in this eventful year is the new status of the Ministry as an Entrepreneurial Development Institution (EDI) courtesy CBNs approval; as a training centre across the six Geopolitical zones, meant to enhance the capacity of our youths to apply and secure the COVID-19 loan facility for Entrepreneurship under the auspices of the CBN.

Another spectacular shift programme that signpost deliberate investment in our youth is the recent Presidential approval for the establishment of Nigeria Youth Investment Fund( NYIF),  an initiative of Sunday Dare. Typical of this administration’s commitment to harnessing the great potentials of our youths for national development, the objective of NYIF is to fund innovativeness, ideas, skills, and talents of the youths for business enterprise.

Structures or machinery for its implementation are already in motion-the  Minister has inaugurated  Focal Group and Inter-Ministerial Technical Committees-for this purpose. In a short while, the youths with fundable ideas would realize that their dreams and ideas would come to fruition under this administration. It is pertinent to state at this juncture, that a minimum of N25bn would be provided by this administration in the next 3years, totalling N75bn, to ringfence the NYIF. That is, it would strictly cater to the investment needs of persons between the ages of 18 and 35 years old.

Similar zeal for innovative ideas and the will to implement by the Youth and Sports Minister is also at play in the Sports segment. Within the dateline of an eventful one year of Sunday Dare in Office; policies and programmes that have brought hope of restoring our glories in Sports include the Adopt Initiative, Sports Industry Policy, reclassification of Sports as Business- no longer recreation, grassroots sports Devt. programme/ talent hunt programme, welfare packages for living and ex-internationals (players and athletes).

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Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

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Ismaila Ahmad Abdullahi Ph.D

The public hearings conducted recently by the two Chambers of the National Assembly have elicited positive responses from a broad spectrum of Nigerians, cutting across regional interest groups, government agencies, civil society groups, concerned individuals, the academia, and Labour Unions, among diverse others. Contrary to a few dissensions hitherto expressed in the media, almost all the stakeholders who spoke during the week-long sessions were unanimous in their declaration that the hallowed Chambers should pass the tax reform bills after a clean-up of the grey areas.

The public hearings were auspicious for all Nigerians desirous of economic growth and fiscal responsibility. They were also a watershed moment for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which had been upbeat about the tax reforms. Indeed, the public hearings had rekindled hope in the tenets of democracy that guarantee freedom of expression and equitable space for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Without gainsaying the fact, the tax reform bills have been unarguably about the most thought-provoking issues in Nigeria today, drawing variegated perspectives and commentaries from even unlikely quarters such as the faith-based leaders, student bodies, and trade unions, which speaks much about the importance of the bills.

In the build-up to the public hearings, not many people believed that the bills would make it to the second reading, much less the public hearings. Even the Northern stakeholders who seemed unlikely to support the passage of the bills have softened their stance and have given valuable suggestions that would enrich the substance of the bills. The Arewa Consultative Forum came to the public hearings well-prepared with a printed booklet that addressed their concerns. It concluded with an advisory that the bills should be “Well planned, properly communicated, strategically implemented and ample dialogue and political consensus allowed for the reforms to be accepted.”

The concerns of ACF ranged from the composition of the proposed Nigeria Revenue Service Board as contained in Part 111, Section 7 of the bill, the unlimited Presidential power to exempt/wave tax payment as proposed in Section 75(1) of the bill, the family income or inheritance tax as contained in Part 1, Section 4(3) of the bill, to the issues around development levy and VAT. On the development levy, the ACF stated that unless the Federal Government is considering budgetary funding for TETFUND, NASENI and NITDA, it does not see the “wisdom behind the plan to replace (them) with NELFUND”.

The position of the North was equally reinforced by the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, Northern Elders Forum, Kano State Government, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, and the FCT Imams. Like the ACF, these stakeholders lent their respective voices to the Section on the Inheritance Tax in Part 1 of the bill and the use of the term ‘ecclesiastical’, which, in their views, undermines certain religious rights and beliefs. The Kano State Government, represented by Mahmud Sagagi, affirmed that “we support tax modernisation” but cautioned that “we must ensure that this process does not come at the expense of states’ constitutional rights and economic stability”. Professor Auwalu Yadudu, a constitutional law professor, drew attention to the use of the ‘supremacy clause’ and cautioned that the repeated use of “notwithstanding” in the bills would undermine the supremacy of the Nigerian constitution if passed as such.

Other stakeholders that made contributions at the sessions included the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigeria Customs Service, and a host of others. While most of their concerns bordered on technical issues requiring fine-tuning, they were unanimous in their support for the bills. They aligned with the position of the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, Ph.D. and the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which is that the extant tax laws and fiscal regulations are obsolete necessitating reforms aimed at creating a fair and equitable tax and fiscal space to grow Nigeria’s economy.

In one of the sessions, Dr Zaach Adedeji expounded on the criss-cross of trade activities in the Free Trade Zone whereby companies misuse tax waivers as exporters to sell their goods or services in the Customs Area at an amount usually less than the price the operators in the Customs Area who pay VAT and other taxes sell theirs thereby disrupting business transactions. This way, the operators in the Free Trade Zone shortchange the government in paying their due taxes by circumventing extant regulations, which are inimical to the economy’s growth.

Overall, the presentations were forthright, foresighted, and helpful in elucidating the issues contained in the bills. According to the statistics read out at the end of the hearings at the Senate, 75 stakeholders were invited, 65 made submissions, and 61 made presentations. At the House of Representatives 53 stakeholders made presentations. By all means, this is a fair representation. Given the presentations, it is evident that the National Assembly has gathered enough materials to guide its deliberations on the bills. As we look forward to the passage of the bills, we commend the leadership of the National Assembly for their unwavering commitment to making the bills see the light of the day.

Abdullahi is the Director of the Communications and Liaison Department, FIRS.

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