CSJ’s Lead Director offers solutions to Nigeria’s revenue crunch

The Lead Director of the Centre for Social (CSJ), Eze Onyekpere has offered evidence-based internal revenue sources as alternatives to Nigeria’s borrowing spree.

Onyekpere was one of the panelists at a Technical Roundtable on the 2022 Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) Budget on the theme: Aligning with the Medium – Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) for Accelerated Transformation organised by ActionAid in Abuja.

The Lead Director of the CSJ, spoke on the theme: “Exploring Internal Opportunities for Expanding Nigeria’s Fiscal Spaces for Sustainable Development Financing.”

He said that Nigeria is in a position to double public revenues if it blocks leakages, streamline fiscal laws and policies, and enforce them to the letter. “But the most critical binding constraint is the absence of the political will for change,” he said.

According to Eze, policies need to be informed by empirical evidence and some form of pragmatism beyond the prescriptions in textbooks adding that reforms will get the support of critical stakeholders if there is increased transparency in the management of public funds.

He suggested that cleaning up the fuel subsidy, streamlining tax expenditure, deducting due operating surplus, properly accounting for the revenue from electronic money transfer, capturing the foreign exchange component of diaspora remittances, and setting up and proper management of special funds will shore up revenue for the country.

Thesis put forward by him includes reorganising the National Housing Fund to mobilise funds that will benefit contributors over the short, medium and long term. Evidence suggests that if the Fund had been well managed since inception during the Ibrahim Babangida presidency, it could have garnered trillions of naira in savings.

Indeed, Nigeria can generate more revenue for financing development if there is a great political will and increased transparency and accountability.