 You're welcome back. It's still the breakfast on plus TV Africa, and we're talking about what the kind of innovation that the federal government wants to bring to make sure that the revenue increases, because the federal government has promised that there will double government revenue without imposing extra tax. Recall that a lot of people are already complaining about the taxation and all that. 7.5 percent value added tax, taxing these taxing that and even when the subsidy is being removed, that's some kind of tax because you are paying for what the government used to pay. So you're paying taxes just payment. Maybe I'm wrong. Okay, but we have the privilege of having Nika Gule in the house this morning. Nika Gule public affairs analyst is in the UK from right. Good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning. Okay, like I said, a lot of people are complaining already about what the situation in the country is and knowing that there's so much tax that we're paying. At least that's what is perceived that there's so much tax we're paying in all aspects of life. You do your banking, you pay too much taxes, you do your petty trading. We are hearing that everybody will be paying 7.5 percent and all that. But the federal government has said that they are not going to increase the taxation. Already are the taxes or the taxation, is the taxation not increased as at this point in your opinion? Thank you very much for the question. In answer to your question directly as to whether the steps that have been taken by the current government do not amount to an increase in taxation already. The answer is yes or no. Taxation is meant to take money away from people and put it together in a pool so that government cannot have money to provide security and welfare to the people which is their constitutional mandate. So the steps that have been taken by the current government, they have not amounted to a direct increase in the tax rate in any of the taxes. For instance, VAT is T7.5 percent, company contract is T30 percent. So in that direction the answer is no. The current government hasn't increased taxes. But there is an implicit increase in taxes by the actions of the current government. For instance, if you were to send school fees to your child abroad before, you approached the central bank and bought dollars at $450 and this government has now collapsed that market such that dollar is not selling at over 700 Naira to anybody for any purpose. It is some sort of taxation that you are not having to pay because the extra money that is not taking away from you to be able to get that dollar amounts to like a taxation. The same thing will happen to the fuel price. So you drove into a petrol station and you bought fuel in the neighborhood of 180, 195 Naira before. Now you have to cough out 500 and something to buy the fuel. Government has successfully taken money away from you and that also is an implicit tax as it may stand. So that is why I say the answer is yes or no depending on which perspective you are looking at in terms of this government increasing taxes or not. Government has said okay they are going to increase the revenue. They are going to double in fact the revenue. Remember that in the inauguration speech he talked about the economy growing by six percent or something like that. Now he's talking about doubling the economy or whatever it is without having to increase the tax. Now you have said taxation or taxes are things that are a collection of money from the people to put it in a pool as you defined it so that government can have money to spend on infrastructure and everything else that we need in the country. Now how is it possible to double the fortunes of Nigeria as it were without having to increase taxes? Very very possible and the reason why I say that is that the Nigeria economy is very virgin, totally unexplored, totally not harnessed. We have vast amounts of resources that are still intact. Lot either in our rich agricultural lands, lot beneath the surface of the earth in the mineral resources that we have, lot in the human capital that we have, lot in the infrastructure like the sea plants that we have all over the country, lot in the tourism that we have not yet explored, lot in so many areas and all the government needs to do is to unlock value from these things and once you unlock value from these things the same tax rates will draw in, I will say, if the government is actually very serious in terms of being very focused in their plans and objectives and the execution of same, we can triple or quadruple Nigeria's revenue within the four-year span of this government because we are basically, Nigeria is like a kitchen with so much foodstuffs inside that we haven't even started to cook the food, you know. So if Nigeria goes on a cookathon as Hidah Batu went the other day with the resources to have in Nigeria, non-stop, we are going to unlock humongous wealth and tax is on the wealth that has been unlocked. So even as company contacts, for instance, remains at 30%. Right now, if we are taxing 30% of say one trillion, assuming the one trillion now increases to 30 trillion, the same 30% is going to bring in a lot more revenue than what is bringing now. And we haven't started, we are, if you look at Nigeria, we immediately will discover crude oil and then we have this concept of federation account where money is from crude oil going to federation account and then it is shared to the three tiers of government, federal, state and local government. Nigerian executives, both at the federal and sub-national, at the state and local government have become very lazy. They're basically waiting on the federation account. If people take their eyes off the federation account and begin to look in words, begin to unlock value from the economies at the local government at the state level and even at the federal level, Nigeria's economy will not be talking about a GDP that we're talking about currently. Our GDP will be... Will that come about without tweaking the constitution a little bit? Because if we have to have creativity at the local government level and the state level, there has to be some kind of freedom for these people, these tiers of government to operate. Do you think in the Nigerian constitution these tiers of government have these powers to exist and perform the way you are thinking they should perform? There's only so much creativity that you can have when you don't have the freedom to practice what you have created. I am not a fan of the current constitution that we have because I believe that the current constitution that we have is a contraction that was put together by General Abacha in his speech to transmit for a military junta leader to a civilian president who will still have maximum powers of a military junta leader, even while he's not bad. So I don't have any love for the current constitution that we have. I believe that we have wasted 24 years of a national assembly time that we could have actually given Nigerians a really people-oriented constitution because the constitution we have currently is a lie. It's a lie in two ways. Number one, the constitution calls us the federal republic of Nigeria but we're not operating a federal republic. We are operating a unitary government. That is the first thing. The second thing is that the constitution says we the people of Nigeria gave ourselves this constitution. That's also a lie because the people of Nigeria, the federating units in Nigeria, all the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria did not come together to say this is the constitution that we are going to operate on where all of us have our interests in. So the constitution we have now to me is a document that should have been discarded within the first few years of this democratic dispensation that was started in 1999. But I will say that it is not as if the government, both at the federal state and local government, cannot use the current constitution to unlock value from the humongous resources that are bound in Nigeria, both on the surface of the earth, below the surface of the earth. And I give you an example. I am from Benway State and Benway State has the tag of the food basket of the nation. Benway has a rich agricultural land. Anywhere on the surface of Benway State, you plant something is going to grow. Benway has a sufficient amount of rainfall during the year, a sufficient amount of sunshine that can make crops to thrive. In the current constitution of Nigeria we have today, there is nothing in that constitution that stops successful governors of Benway State of putting tractors on Benway lands, clearing the land and engaging in large-scale industrial agriculture. There is nothing. If the first governor of Benway State under this democratic dispensation, George Akume, decided that he was going to impact on an agricultural program where he would plant one million trees, one million economic trees, three crops in each of the local governments in Benway State. Today, Benway will be a major exporter of coconuts, of oranges, of bananas, of cucumbers, of watermelon, of cashew nuts, and all of those things without the constitution stopping him. There is nothing in the constitution of Nigeria today that stops any governor in Nigeria, any governor of unlocking value from the agricultural sector, for instance. So what is stopping them? Nothing. The only thing that is stopping them is that they know that at the end of the month they are going to Abuja, where Big Daddy, the federal government, is going to unlock value and give them money, give them fat checks running into billions every month, and they just go back and spend it. And if you look at the federal government, for instance, as we speak today, and I keep emphasizing on this, and I just hope that the handlers of the current regime also hear about this. As we speak today, Nigeria is operating on 3000 megawatts of electricity. Perhaps in plus TV now, you are running on generators. If you are not running on generators right now, you will switch on your generator during the course of the day. There is nothing in the constitution of Nigeria as we speak today that stops the federal government from expanding the power generation transmission and distributing networks in Nigeria, either by themselves or by bringing in global capital that can do that. There is nothing. There is nothing in the constitution. If there is anything in the constitution of Nigeria that stops the federal government from doing that, someone should point it out to me. But the federal government is lazy. They are taking their eyes off the ball. They don't understand that without electricity, the economy will not thrive, regardless of what they try to do. So they have been changing ministers of finance who manage the fiscal side of the economy. They have been changing central bank governors who manage the monetary policy aspect of the economy. They have been doing this or that, but the economy has not been growing because the economy is not powered with sufficient electricity. If you compare us, man, to Brazil that has the same population as us. As we speak today, Brazil is distributing 150,000 megawatts of electricity. If our leaders can take their eyes and look at Brazil and say, why are we Brazil distributing 150,000 megawatts? And we are not doing 3,000 megawatts. Then it will begin to bring a bear in their head as to why our economy is not doing well. Okay. Thank you, Nick. So unfortunately, we cannot go beyond this time. I would like to thank you for coming on the show this morning, Nick. Thank you very much, and a nice day to you and to Nigerians. Thank you. Okay, that was Nick Agoulet, Public Affairs Analyst, talking to us from the UK. We'll take a very short break. When we return, we'll be looking at whether or not the craze for Guinness World Record is something that anybody should jump on. Stay with us.