The running joke on social media is that the Lagos state government will soon impose a tax on the ‘Ikorodu Bois’--a young, creative group that has successfully mimicked some of the best videos in the world, from Hollywood blockbusters to pop culture jams--after they received film production equipment from Netflix. 

That may well be a stretch, but it appears as though federal and state governments are looking for new excuses to tax citizens every other day. 

Nigerians have been asked to pay taxes for online bank transactions, taxes have been imposed for using the Point Of Sale (POS) machine, you are charged for interbank transactions, a new tax has been imposed on house rent, Value Added Tax (VAT) has been increased from 5% to 7.5% and there is a plan to tax logistics and courier firms.

The Lagos state government has just imposed new levies on ride-hailing companies. In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, there is a tax on radios and televisions and there are all kinds of informal levies from street urchins on commercial buses and taxis, and a land use charge.

As Nigeria reels from the crash in the price of crude oil in the global market, it is inevitable that more taxes would have to be imposed on citizens and businesses to fund budgets. Paying one’s fair share of taxes is after all an age-long social contract between governments and the people. 

However, it is the arbitrariness and scatter-gun approach with which our governments generate taxes that galls. 

Citizens have raised valid concerns about multiple taxation at this most difficult of times because even though we live in a 21st century run by data and technology, Nigeria has not been able to harmonise all of the data it has generated to ensure a widening of the tax net, better planning and seamless taxation of its people. 

There is also an enduring feeling that a chunk of these taxes will end up in private bank accounts of corrupt government officials and civil servants, rather than being used to fix decrepit road surfaces, equip hospitals, improve education or fix an electricity sector that has been comatose since 1960. 

Endemic corruption and a breach of the social contract over the years means Nigerians can’t trust their governments with their taxes. 

Federal and state governments will need to harmonise their tax generation methods by working with a single, trusted database. When you ask citizens and businesses to pay multiple or countless taxes, you weaken the private sector which is the engine of economic growth in any nation, cripple start-ups and put more people out of work.

Some of the recent taxes won’t come across as desperate and ridiculous, or could have been better tracked, if we ran a country where everyone’s biometric data (fingerprints, headshot photograph, signature) is appropriately captured by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

As we scan the land for alternative sources of revenue in the wake of an oil price slump, it is important that we do so strategically, meaningfully and without adding sorrow to an already suffering people. 

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*Pulse Editorial is the view of the editorial team at Pulse. It does not reflect the views of the Organisation Pulse.