Featured

Youth Strategic to the Nigerian Project – Minister

Published

5 years ago

November 17, 2019

Joel Ajayi

The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare has said that Nigeria will in the coming years will rely more on its youth population as a resource, which makes it imperative to increase investment in their development as the Nigerian Project.M

Ministerg this revelation while delivering a lecture titled “Constructive Youth Partnership In The Nigerian Project: A Sustainable Model” at the 13th Annual Lecture of the Alumni Association Of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomosho – Oyo State.

According to him, the youth will be strategic to developing smart products and solutions to conquer the challenges and problems of climate change, economic slowdown, unemployment and poverty.

“The massive potential of the Nigerian youth bulge is globally recognized. With a growth rate of 3.5 % per annum this segment represents the fastest growing in the world and will effectively dominate the society completely within the next two decades providing the human resource for critical aspects of the Nigerian state.”

While calling on the Nigerian Youth to understand and own the Nigerian Project, he also called for the engagement, mobilization and empowerment of young people. “All around the world, young people are contributing positively to the development of their communities, demonstrating daily that youth is not a problem to be solved but a resource to be harnessed. Nigeria parades a hugely resourceful and talented youth population”, he said.

On his proposals to achieve the Nigerian Project, he reiterated the importance of starting early, stressing that “Sowing the seed of the Nigerian dream will not be at the University level. It must start from childhood because it is at this point that children develop a mental image of who or what they want to become in life. The picture or image they need added to theirs is that of a country which can propel them to achieving that dream.”

Calling for a rebranding of the nation, he said, “we must rebrand Nigeria and communicate it in the right way. In rebranding, we must create a deliberate image of the Nigeria we want our young people to invest in; and then take deliberate steps to make that Nigeria work. For instance, if we want a Nigeria that supports innovative ideas, we must put structures in place that helps innovative ideas to flourish irrespective of the person’s gender, political leaning, religion or ethnic affiliation. There must be a transparent system that gives everyone equal opportunities.

That way, young people with ideas will begin to have hope in the Nigerian project, will flourish and invest in birthing creative or innovative ideas that will catapult the country on the path of massive national development.

“There is need to reposition the mental reasoning of our youth and economically empower them to satisfy the demands of the modern world. Rebranding Nigeria is one of the veritable tools to achieve this objective. Unless rebranding directs the power and energy of the youth towards academic and productive goals, the country will keep on experiencing social vices, moral and academic degradation.” The minister cautioned.

Highlighting the role of ICT in re-branding the country, he said, “it is a peculiar one because ICT is a veritable tool for fast and effective mass communication. The impact of ICT in the world today is far reaching and pervades all boundaries and cultural differences. For effective re-branding all components of ICT and at all levels must be deployed in enlightening, training, and encouraging people towards re-branding”.

Harping on the need for a sustainable model, he said, “we must develop strategies to transfer ownership of the Nigerian Project to youth. One of the ways we can do this is through the Concept of Social Businesses. The underlying value to communicate is CARE. Youth must see that Nigeria is a country that CARES for them and for the things that matter to them. And that there is a system of harnessing and redistributing the opportunities for this CARE.

Social and economic entrepreneurship holds special promise for helping to sustain the rebuilding of the Nigerian Project. They have the potential to play significant roles in developing technologies that can help mobilize and engage young people in the rebuilding efforts”.

He further called for a de-emphasizing of the dividing factors in the country especially on official documents. “Majority of our youth are millennia. They live most of their lives on the internet, which has broken down boundaries and miniaturized the world into one huge space. Communities are no longer physical entities defined by geographical boundaries but are more social or professional groupings in the virtual world, joined together by interests that transcend religious, ethnic, or even political divides.

“This means that our youth, who are more citizens of the digital world than they physical world, will connect and interact with themselves irrespective of their physical divides. This effectively gives us a huge opportunity to de-emphasize, and hopefully one day eliminate such divisive identifiers like tribe, religion, LGA, etc. on our official government documents like forms.

“While these data are important variables for statistical purposes, they do little to promote the unity of the country, and more importantly, the Nigerian Project,” he noted.

The Minister while calling for the institution of a reward system that honours and promotes Nigerian values which will invariably speak to the Nigerian Project, said, “we must keep the young people inspired and focused towards the Nigerian Project. One way to do this is by sustaining a reward system with privileges attached to National Honours (like express access at airports, subsidized hotel lodgings for a period, certain volumes of made-in-Nigeria goods for some period, etc. A virtual Hall of Fame for holders of certain national medals, streets named after such individuals, their plagues telling the story behind such naming.

Intimating his audience on the strategy of the Minister of Youth and Sports Development for actualizing the mandate handed to him by President Muhammadu Buhari to keep the youth productively busy, he said, “the next level belongs to the Nigerian youth. Mr. President’s has a new DEEL (D for digital literacy. E for Entrepreneurship. E for Employability. L for Leadership) for the youth; to train and equip Nigerian youth with the skills they need to compete and for national development. The digital revolution offers an unparalleled opportunity to drive a new wave of international economic growth for countries that have hitherto not fully enjoyed the benefits of the global economy.

“Nigeria is committed to raising a new tribe of 500,000 tech savvy youth countrywide in the next 2 years who will expand the frontiers of innovation not just in combating climate change, but in agriculture, medicine, education and biosciences. The Ministry recently launched the Digital Youth Nigeria project, (DY.NG) that will equip our youth with relevant digital skills set and knowledge that will enable them produce digital products, build smart apps and invent tools that will help reverse or slow down the pace of global warming and sustained social economic growth. A collaborative approach between the public and private sector will drive this project.

“History offers us another opportunity to rebuild from the ruins of the past. From oil, history again offers us another resource – the Youth. By 2030, Nigeria’s greatest resource will no longer be oil but it’s Youth. If you doubt go, ask the Asians.

Nigeria must begin to make huge investments in her youth. That should be the true Nigerian project. Bankable investments in education, technology, agriculture and developmental infrastructure that are sustainable. Investments in our youth now, will be a wise investment. That to my mind is the Nigerian Project. And it is sustainable.”

Share on Facebook

Business

Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

Published

2 weeks ago

March 6, 2025

The Gleamer

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.

Share on Facebook