Monday, May 28, 2018
Video - Nigeria to play DR Congo as part of World Cup preparations
The Nigerian Super Eagles will be taking on the Democratic Republic of Congo in a friendly match on Monday in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt. The match will help Nigeria prepare for the 2018 World Cup, being held in Russia in a few weeks time. It will also afford Coach, Gernort Rhor, the opportunity to prune down his provisional squad for the global tournament.
Nigeria plans to get serious on income tax collection
Paying income tax used to be a joke in Nigeria which, no wonder, has the worst tax to GDP ratio in sub-Saharan Africa.
As one banking executive put it: “In Nigeria, the government pretends to tax people and people pretend to pay. That’s the Nigerian social contract.” But these days it’s no laughing matter, as an ambitious government scheme designed to make the executive class pay up draws to a close.
Millions of people for the first time are now coughing up taxes as President Muhammadu Buhari’s government conducts one of the country’s most vigorous collection drives in years. The money is desperately needed. Widening Nigeria’s tax base will help boost non-oil revenue in Africa’s largest economy, which is limping out of its worst recession in 25 years. And Nigeria has a long way to go. Its current tax-to-gross domestic product ratio is just 5.9%, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In Lagos alone, there are 6,800 millionaires and 360 multi-millionaires, according to a 2017 report by AfrAsia Bank. But top earners hardly lead by example.
In 2016, just 241 people paid more than 20 million naira ($55,600, 47,400 euros) in personal income taxes, the Nigerian finance ministry reported.
It’s not hard to see why Nigerians would be reluctant to pay tax to fund public services, when there has been no visible return.
Infrastructure in most cities is disintegrating. Roads between states are crumbling. People pay for their own electricity and water.
Endemic corruption is partly to blame, said the Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II, one of Nigeria’s leading Islamic figures who served as central bank governor in the previous administration.
“Improving transparency and public financial management is critical to improving revenues,” he said this week at a meeting of the African Development Bank Group in South Korea. “Make sure the taxes actually get into the government’s pockets and you don’t have all these leakages.”
Though difficult, tax reform isn’t impossible in Nigeria.
Lagos state, home to the country’s commercial capital, has successfully mobilised a tax base whose contributions represent over a third of internally generated revenue collected in all Nigeria’s 36 states, said transparency organisation BudgIT. That has allowed it to finance a growing number of projects, including a cable-stayed bridge linking the upmarket neighbourhoods of Ikoyi and Lekki that is now a city landmark.
Buhari, who is seeking re-election at polls next February, wants to double the tax-to-GDP ratio by 2020.
To do that, his finance minister Kemi Adeosun has followed in the footsteps of Turkey and Indonesia and launched a tax amnesty programme.
The Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) has a two-part strategy.
First, it offers Nigerians a period of grace to regularise their tax affairs or else face a prison term of up to five years, financial penalties and possible forfeiture of assets.
Second, it uses data to link land registry records and tax receipts to root out defaulters.
The government enlisted the help of international asset recovery firm Kroll to troll bureau de change networks, WikiLeaks and even the Panama Papers to identify negligent high net worth individuals.
The programme was launched in June last year, with the government declaring every Thursday “tax awareness day“.
Tax officers were stationed at airports and a massive digital billboard advertising of the scheme flashed over the Lekki bridge toll gate in Lagos — a not-so-subtle threat to the denizens of the affluent suburb. In May, Adeosun — a former chartered accountant and auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London — said Nigeria’s tax base had risen from 14-million people in 2016 to 19 million in 2018.
But Adeosun’s promise to “name, shame and prosecute” defaulters lost some bite after the government pushed back the closing date by three months, from March 31 to June 30.
Still, those familiar with the programme say that it is well on track to deliver on its target of more than one billion dollars.
That amount may be modest but it’s a step in the right direction, said Yomi Olugbenro, West Africa tax specialist at Deloitte in Lagos. There’s something to be said for launching the scheme, which “definitely has more people talking about taxation“, he said. The key is to make sure the amnesty programme is built upon in the future and isn’t just a once-off windfall. Otherwise Nigerians will revert to old habits.
“It’s a chicken and egg thing,” Olugbenro said. “The government will tell you, ‘We need the money to provide all things that aren’t there’. “Taxpayers are saying, ‘I need to be convinced’.”
As one banking executive put it: “In Nigeria, the government pretends to tax people and people pretend to pay. That’s the Nigerian social contract.” But these days it’s no laughing matter, as an ambitious government scheme designed to make the executive class pay up draws to a close.
Millions of people for the first time are now coughing up taxes as President Muhammadu Buhari’s government conducts one of the country’s most vigorous collection drives in years. The money is desperately needed. Widening Nigeria’s tax base will help boost non-oil revenue in Africa’s largest economy, which is limping out of its worst recession in 25 years. And Nigeria has a long way to go. Its current tax-to-gross domestic product ratio is just 5.9%, according to the International Monetary Fund.
In Lagos alone, there are 6,800 millionaires and 360 multi-millionaires, according to a 2017 report by AfrAsia Bank. But top earners hardly lead by example.
In 2016, just 241 people paid more than 20 million naira ($55,600, 47,400 euros) in personal income taxes, the Nigerian finance ministry reported.
It’s not hard to see why Nigerians would be reluctant to pay tax to fund public services, when there has been no visible return.
Infrastructure in most cities is disintegrating. Roads between states are crumbling. People pay for their own electricity and water.
Endemic corruption is partly to blame, said the Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II, one of Nigeria’s leading Islamic figures who served as central bank governor in the previous administration.
“Improving transparency and public financial management is critical to improving revenues,” he said this week at a meeting of the African Development Bank Group in South Korea. “Make sure the taxes actually get into the government’s pockets and you don’t have all these leakages.”
Though difficult, tax reform isn’t impossible in Nigeria.
Lagos state, home to the country’s commercial capital, has successfully mobilised a tax base whose contributions represent over a third of internally generated revenue collected in all Nigeria’s 36 states, said transparency organisation BudgIT. That has allowed it to finance a growing number of projects, including a cable-stayed bridge linking the upmarket neighbourhoods of Ikoyi and Lekki that is now a city landmark.
Buhari, who is seeking re-election at polls next February, wants to double the tax-to-GDP ratio by 2020.
To do that, his finance minister Kemi Adeosun has followed in the footsteps of Turkey and Indonesia and launched a tax amnesty programme.
The Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) has a two-part strategy.
First, it offers Nigerians a period of grace to regularise their tax affairs or else face a prison term of up to five years, financial penalties and possible forfeiture of assets.
Second, it uses data to link land registry records and tax receipts to root out defaulters.
The government enlisted the help of international asset recovery firm Kroll to troll bureau de change networks, WikiLeaks and even the Panama Papers to identify negligent high net worth individuals.
The programme was launched in June last year, with the government declaring every Thursday “tax awareness day“.
Tax officers were stationed at airports and a massive digital billboard advertising of the scheme flashed over the Lekki bridge toll gate in Lagos — a not-so-subtle threat to the denizens of the affluent suburb. In May, Adeosun — a former chartered accountant and auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London — said Nigeria’s tax base had risen from 14-million people in 2016 to 19 million in 2018.
But Adeosun’s promise to “name, shame and prosecute” defaulters lost some bite after the government pushed back the closing date by three months, from March 31 to June 30.
Still, those familiar with the programme say that it is well on track to deliver on its target of more than one billion dollars.
That amount may be modest but it’s a step in the right direction, said Yomi Olugbenro, West Africa tax specialist at Deloitte in Lagos. There’s something to be said for launching the scheme, which “definitely has more people talking about taxation“, he said. The key is to make sure the amnesty programme is built upon in the future and isn’t just a once-off windfall. Otherwise Nigerians will revert to old habits.
“It’s a chicken and egg thing,” Olugbenro said. “The government will tell you, ‘We need the money to provide all things that aren’t there’. “Taxpayers are saying, ‘I need to be convinced’.”
Friday, May 25, 2018
Video - Bata's entry to the shoe market in Nigeria
It may be Africa's most populous country, and home to its one of its largest economies, but the global shoemaker Bata is not keen on investing in local manufacturing plant in Nigeria. That's according to the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Thomas Bata. The company had production hubs in Kenya and South Africa, which can produce at least 30 million pairs of shoes, each year. Here he is explaining the firm's approach to the West African economy.
Video - Conflict in northern Nigeria partly linked to climate change
The African Union's Peace and Security Council is due to discuss the link between climate change and conflict in Africa. The problem's particularly acute in Nigeria, and has been blamed for the growing deadly conflict between herders and farmers, in recent months.
Survivors of Boko Haram starved and raped by Nigerian military
Shortly after Halima* arrived at a displacement camp in northeast Nigeria, a soldier approached her offering chicken and yams. Halima recognised him as one of the men who had beaten her husband and taken him into detention. For days, she had barely eaten so she accepted the food out of desperation. When the soldier returned demanding sex in exchange for the food, Halima was too scared to say "no".
"The soldiers are kings. When you see them, everybody is afraid", said Halima, who arrived at the Bama Hospital camp in late 2015. "They decide, they say nobody should complain. So, I did what he wanted."
Halima is one of thousands of women who, after surviving the brutal rule of the armed group Boko Haram, found themselves trapped in a nightmarish system of sexual violence and exploitation at the hands of the Nigerian military.
A new report by Amnesty International, "They Betrayed Us", documents the plight of women who were forced from their homes, separated from their husbands and confined to remote "satellite camps" in the northeast of Nigeria.
With hunger rife in the camps, military personnel and the militia members working with them used their authority and access to food and other basic necessities to coerce women into sex, which amounts to rape under international law. The soldiers sometimes used force if the women resisted.
Hauwa* told us she was raped on several occasions by a militia member after arriving at Bama Hospital Camp. She described being hemmed in by sexual violence and starvation.
"I arrived with 130 other women and children [in early 2016]. Hunger and thirst [killed] 58 from our group in the first four months," Hauwa said.
"You'll see a military man with food in the hand and he'd say, 'If you like me, take this food'. If you accept the food, later, he'd come back to you to have intercourse. If you refuse, he'd rape you [using physical force]."
Amnesty International has collected evidence that thousands of people have starved to death in these camps, mostly in late 2015 and in 2016. Almost half of the women we spoke to in one camp, Bama Hospital camp, said that one or more of their children had died.
While the daily deaths have now abated as humanitarian assistance has scaled up, many women are still restricted from leaving the camps and sometimes go days without food. In these conditions, sexual exploitation has thrived.
Since 2012, when Boko Haram started attacking civilians in northeast Nigeria, Amnesty International has repeatedly denounced abuses carried out by the armed group, which has committed massacres, launched car bomb and gun attacks in cities and abducted thousands of people.
But the crimes committed by Boko Haram must not blind the outside world to the widespread abuses carried out by the Nigerian military, which is responsible for arbitrary detention, torture and thousands of unlawful killings.
Rape and sexual violence are just one of the numerous injustices women have faced at the hands of the military. They described their villages being burned down in military operations and being ordered to leave, and being starved and beaten in the camps while their husbands and sons were detained.
Treated with suspicion by soldiers simply because they lived under Boko Haram's control, hundreds of women and girls were also detained and transferred to military detention facilities such as the Giwa barracks, where Amnesty International has documented the deaths of at least 37 women and children since 2015 due to the appalling conditions.
"They asked us women where our husbands were, then they flogged us with sticks. They beat my children and said they are Boko Haram children ... I was pregnant at the time," said 25-year-old Zara, who spent two years in Giwa barracks with her children, and gave birth unassisted in an overcrowded cell.
Some women detained for being so-called "Boko Haram wives" told us that they had been abducted by the armed group and forcibly married to a member. During subsequent military interrogations, they were beaten into silence as they tried to explain this to the soldiers.
For too long, Nigeria's allies - including the United States and the UK - have been content to condemn the terrible crimes committed by Boko Haram while giving the Nigerian military a free pass. Even UN humanitarian agencies working on the ground, where abuses are often committed in plain sight, have done little to challenge the confinement of women to militarised camps and the outrageous levels of sexual violence perpetrated by security forces within them.
Last year, the acting president of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, established a Presidential Investigation Panel to review the army's compliance with human rights obligations, but so far there has been no action and the situation for women in the camps remains bleak.
Yet, against all odds, these women bravely continue their fight for justice including the return of their husbands and sons. In September 2017, hundreds of displaced women lined the streets waiting to tell their stories to the president's investigation panel. They had drawn up lists of their loved ones in detention, or of those who died in the camps.
As one of these women told us, "This has happened to us. It cannot be undone now. But the government should recognise it. They should know how we suffered and how we died. They should make sure it does not happen again."
* Names were changed to protect the women' identities.
"The soldiers are kings. When you see them, everybody is afraid", said Halima, who arrived at the Bama Hospital camp in late 2015. "They decide, they say nobody should complain. So, I did what he wanted."
Halima is one of thousands of women who, after surviving the brutal rule of the armed group Boko Haram, found themselves trapped in a nightmarish system of sexual violence and exploitation at the hands of the Nigerian military.
A new report by Amnesty International, "They Betrayed Us", documents the plight of women who were forced from their homes, separated from their husbands and confined to remote "satellite camps" in the northeast of Nigeria.
With hunger rife in the camps, military personnel and the militia members working with them used their authority and access to food and other basic necessities to coerce women into sex, which amounts to rape under international law. The soldiers sometimes used force if the women resisted.
Hauwa* told us she was raped on several occasions by a militia member after arriving at Bama Hospital Camp. She described being hemmed in by sexual violence and starvation.
"I arrived with 130 other women and children [in early 2016]. Hunger and thirst [killed] 58 from our group in the first four months," Hauwa said.
"You'll see a military man with food in the hand and he'd say, 'If you like me, take this food'. If you accept the food, later, he'd come back to you to have intercourse. If you refuse, he'd rape you [using physical force]."
Amnesty International has collected evidence that thousands of people have starved to death in these camps, mostly in late 2015 and in 2016. Almost half of the women we spoke to in one camp, Bama Hospital camp, said that one or more of their children had died.
While the daily deaths have now abated as humanitarian assistance has scaled up, many women are still restricted from leaving the camps and sometimes go days without food. In these conditions, sexual exploitation has thrived.
Since 2012, when Boko Haram started attacking civilians in northeast Nigeria, Amnesty International has repeatedly denounced abuses carried out by the armed group, which has committed massacres, launched car bomb and gun attacks in cities and abducted thousands of people.
But the crimes committed by Boko Haram must not blind the outside world to the widespread abuses carried out by the Nigerian military, which is responsible for arbitrary detention, torture and thousands of unlawful killings.
Rape and sexual violence are just one of the numerous injustices women have faced at the hands of the military. They described their villages being burned down in military operations and being ordered to leave, and being starved and beaten in the camps while their husbands and sons were detained.
Treated with suspicion by soldiers simply because they lived under Boko Haram's control, hundreds of women and girls were also detained and transferred to military detention facilities such as the Giwa barracks, where Amnesty International has documented the deaths of at least 37 women and children since 2015 due to the appalling conditions.
"They asked us women where our husbands were, then they flogged us with sticks. They beat my children and said they are Boko Haram children ... I was pregnant at the time," said 25-year-old Zara, who spent two years in Giwa barracks with her children, and gave birth unassisted in an overcrowded cell.
Some women detained for being so-called "Boko Haram wives" told us that they had been abducted by the armed group and forcibly married to a member. During subsequent military interrogations, they were beaten into silence as they tried to explain this to the soldiers.
For too long, Nigeria's allies - including the United States and the UK - have been content to condemn the terrible crimes committed by Boko Haram while giving the Nigerian military a free pass. Even UN humanitarian agencies working on the ground, where abuses are often committed in plain sight, have done little to challenge the confinement of women to militarised camps and the outrageous levels of sexual violence perpetrated by security forces within them.
Last year, the acting president of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, established a Presidential Investigation Panel to review the army's compliance with human rights obligations, but so far there has been no action and the situation for women in the camps remains bleak.
Yet, against all odds, these women bravely continue their fight for justice including the return of their husbands and sons. In September 2017, hundreds of displaced women lined the streets waiting to tell their stories to the president's investigation panel. They had drawn up lists of their loved ones in detention, or of those who died in the camps.
As one of these women told us, "This has happened to us. It cannot be undone now. But the government should recognise it. They should know how we suffered and how we died. They should make sure it does not happen again."
* Names were changed to protect the women' identities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)