Martin

Bringing the informal sector into the tax net has been a critical government concern at all levels. The informal sector in Nigeria and indeed sub-Saharan Africa is vast and averages between 50 and 65 per cent of GDP in countries such as Benin, Tanzania and Nigeria based on a 2016 IMF working paper titled “The […]

Voluntary tax compliance is unarguably the gold standard in IGR expansion strategy. First, increasing marginal compliance rates consequent on such expanding levels of compliance also indicate taxpayers growing internalization and response to their moral, civic, and legal obligations in tax payments. Second, it revs up the operational efficiency of tax administration as increasing the voluntary […]

Agriculture effectively sustained Nigeria’s early post-colonial economy and financed most of its bequeathed legacy institutions and projects. The enormous developmental challenges of that era and the responsibility of each region to manage its expenditure deepened the entrepreneurial capacities of those foundational leaders to finance their fiscal programmes from their naturally endowed resources. Cocoa and rubber […]

The last decades produced an ominously bountiful harvest of deaths and destruction. The Nigerian Security Tracker recorded approximately 86,000 deaths due to insecurity since 2011. An average of 810 people lost their lives to insecurity monthly in the past two years. Since 2011, government security agencies alone have wasted approximately 13,500 lives, while Boko Haram […]

It is not debatable that society benefits when most citizens are responsible, knowledgeable, fair, and empathetic. Consequently, many societies’ institutions such as the family, traditional communities, religious groups, and schools imbue these qualities in their members. Most tertiary institutions globally also qualify and certify their students based on character and learning. This supposition is that […]

Attempts to manipulate the outcome of elections in Nigeria using violent methods have a long history dating back to the First Republic. For instance, the well pronounced ethnic allegiance of the dominant political parties in 1964/65 led to massive violence. The ethnic fanaticism resulted in massive irregularities in the ensuing elections, consequently venting Nigeria’s first […]

Albeit not the only indicator, poverty, and unemployment undoubtedly play up strongly in the set of variables considered when deciding to participate in a crime. Two other foundational decision factors are escape opportunities and the monetary or other benefits from the criminality. Given good prospects in the foundational decision variables, the presence of lack, gauged […]

Albeit not having the correct data on the volume of illicit arms in circulation in the country, we nevertheless feel and experience their preponderance. Their abundance sustains religious insurgency, banditry, secessionist agitations, hostage-taking and other forms of criminality. In 2016, the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa, [UNREC], estimated that over […]

Regardless of the enormous efforts of our security agencies since 2009, when terrorism officially gained a place in our country, terrorist territorial control has terrifyingly expanded. All three terrorist categories, the criminal herders, the murderous bandits, and the Islamic religious insurgents, have a registered presence in at least one part of the country despite the […]