Part of the objective of this piece is to look at the trending issue of the Tax Reform Bill as enunciated by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, legislative innuendo and how, from the scratch, the executive arm of government created confusion about the process with little or no proper communication strategy for the needed engagement with the citizenry.
The piece does not intend to go into the nitty gritty of the document, the Tax Reform Bill or to x-ray the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the bill. A lot has been said by tax experts and celebrated economists. I believe such technicalities should be left to experts for honest and proper analyses of the content, process, and objectives.
I am not interested in discussing whether the Deputy Senate President, Senator Barau Jibrin, was trapped, or what he did was deliberate to give him access to the corridors of power come 2027. My major concern as a student of media and communications is, where is the missing communication link, that created all hues and cries?
The approach to inform citizens about the Bill and other embedded explanations is highly elitist. Even at that, a significant percentage of our elite do not have a good understanding of the Tax Reform Bill.
My area of great concern is, how the communication aspect of the entire process was pushed down the ladder, not minding the far-reaching consequences of the byproduct, if you wish. Whose fault? Those saddled with the responsibility of handling the project. By this, I mean the gamut from abstract expressionism to realistic portraiture of the entire project. Certainly not the presidency, in my view.
Even if the inputs from the public would not be regarded to be part of the process, but at least Nigerians deserve clearer understanding of the entire process. Nigerians ought to have been fully enlightened and educated as per the content, direction, actions, responsibilities, historical position of the existing tax laws within the framework of the new bill and specific roles of the stakeholders, among many other factors.
As laudable as it appears, the Tax Reform Bill has four parts or aspects. These are: Nigerian Tax Bill, Nigerian Tax Administration Bill, Nigerian Revenue Service Bill and Joint Revenue Board Bill. Some commentators have described this as four-in-one.
With good communication strategy and for the sake of gaining popular support from the public, I thought the executive arm of the federal government, specifically the promoters of the bill, would have designed some proactive media and communication interventions to tell Nigerians what has been in the offing.
Most of the critical commentaries are louder from the North. This is because many northerners have the notion that the Tax Reform Bill was aimed to further impoverish the North. I also observe that some of the comments and commentaries about the bill in the last few days are objective, some quasi-critical and quasi-objective, some pseudo-critical and pseudo-objective, some critically subjective while some are embedded on the premise of ignorance of the entire content, objectives and process.
But I also believe that the promoters fueled the criticisms by their disregard for effective media and communication plan. This is why I believe that the misconceptions were aided. Who aided the misconceptions? Of course, the promoters themselves, particularly the main actors playing the script on the screen.
There is nowhere in the North where I saw an aggressive campaign to create awareness on the Tax Reform Bill. Historical, Northern Nigeria has a listening audience when it comes to media usage. Yes, the social media is also visible to the northern youth. That is basic and quite true. So, even at the level of the social media, the engagement in the North by the promoters was poor.
There was nothing like aggressive radio programmes, phone-in programmes with experts sponsored by the promoters of the bill. In Kano, for instance, where we have about 30 radio stations, I doubt very much if there were five radio stations that run either special bulletin or special programmes or documentaries on retainership basis, sponsored by the people handling this new tax bill. And this applies to other northern states.
I therefore call on the National Assembly to avoid the mistake of the promoters of the Tax Reform Bill, which was probably done by omission or commission. The two chambers of the National Assembly – the Senate and House of Representatives – I suggest, should push for clearer understanding of this document to the public.
It is glaring to all of us that the promoters of the bill were not able to employ scientific communication strategy in creating spaces for proper engagement for the legal instrument.
That could be the explanation why even some legislators cannot comprehend the document as revealed by Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin, in a recent interview he granted to the BBC Hausa Service.
At the level of the Governors’ Forum, the Tax Reform Bill is not a darling document to many of the governors, which was why they criticised it. With this (mis)conception of the document among the elite, what then would stop the common man from rejecting the entire content and process?
Right from day one, I thought the promoters of the Bill would create amplified awareness strategy around the process and its content.
As Senator Ali Ndume explained, he was not against the Bill, but that his concern is its timing. It is therefore pertinent for our legislators to, first and foremost, paint a picture of clearer understanding of the process and the content of the Tax Reform Bill, before throwing it to Nigerians for public hearing.
From the way I see it, because of these heated debates there is every likelihood that some adjustments may come into play. This is just an opinion, anyway.
Anwar writes from Kano via [email protected]
