Martin

The two most significant errors in the design and implementation of domestic revenue mobilisation reforms at the subnational government level are focusing narrowly on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and tax policies. One primary underlying assumption is that strengthening the IRS would put them in a better position to collect revenue from other revenue-generating agencies […]

IGR pursuits can create the same effects as a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they provide the firepower for good governance and citizens’ well-being. Government revenue generally provides requisite funding for critical institutions to design and implement sound policies and the rule of law. They also underlie the availability of infrastructure supporting businesses and […]

Civil society organisations (CSOs) in Nigeria have earned a long-standing reputation for successfully inter-mediating policymakers and implementers on the one hand and the citizens on the other with fruitful outcomes. Civil society groups belong to the class of associations neither owned by the government nor the family. They are also primarily nonprofit-focused. Some of the […]

For many years, governors exploited the relative budgetary independence of their states to enrich themselves corruptly, limit citizens’ rights to participate in governance, and support a perverse culture that undermined their ability to fulfil their commitments to employees and citizens. The strategy was simple: prevent the citizens from having adequate information about the government. Fuzzy, […]

Adequate information and knowledge facilitate conviction and sound decisions. It is even more potent in delivering these benefits, the more accurate, relevant, convincing and easier to understand. Due to this lack of conviction, many citizens do not trust the government enough and therefore resist or fail to comply with their tax payment obligations. In response, […]

This article is a near-perfect clone of my essay “Awakening government entrepreneurship”, published in this newspaper’s July 6, 2020 edition. The significant difference between that article and this one is the focus. While the earlier publication focused on the Nigerian government, this one is narrower. Nevertheless, the message is the same, and the underlying principles […]

Large numbers of analysts, business people, investors, civil servants, and the media, among others, pay special attention to the federal government’s expenditure proposals each year. A primary motivation for the engagement is to identify how the federal government’s proposed expenditures would positively or negatively affect their prospects. Investors and businesspeople carefully pore over the numbers […]

Governors are the chief security officers of their states. The title is not one of those sycophantic labels to massage their ego. That is why they also receive security votes to ensure they adequately perform the responsibility. State governors’ poor deployment of their states’ so-called security votes and other security budgets in tackling insecurity has […]

For obvious reasons, subnational governments are obsessed with maximising internally generated revenue. The more, the merrier. In an overly simplified conceptualization, the thinking is that more IGR affords the government an enhanced capacity to provide good governance. But government income growth comes at various costs to the government and the citizens. The presence of trade-offs […]

A comprehensive taxpayer database is an essential requirement for effective tax-based IGR expansion. Every subnational government is better off collecting taxes from registered taxpayers. The leading cause of many state and local governments’ underwhelming results in their independent revenue generation is their failure to build such databases. That is why direct tax (particularly personal income […]