How Lagos Can Generate Tax - Lawmaker

Chairman of the Lagos State House of Assembly Committee on Public Accounts for Local Government, Bisi Yusuf, in this interview with Naij.com, speaks on how Lagos state has fared with its budget as well as how to shore up the revenue generation capacity of the state.

Let us know your plans for the Local Government Councils in Lagos as Chairman of the House Committee on Public Account for Local Governments.

What we are suggesting is that the local councils should not sit on the fence and that they must think outside the box. They should not depend solely on federal allocations, which is not stable. They should go all out to generate revenues, and block all the loopholes. Once they do this, it would be better and whatever they get from the federal government would just be an addition. The LSHA has told them about preparing budgets and they would certainly work based on the acumen of the Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa. Again, their capital projects must be higher than the recurrent like what is happening at the state level, where capital expenditure is more than recurrent expenditure. The local councils should not spend all their monies on overhead costs.

Bisi Yusuf believes that the Lagos state government has a huge opportunity of making huge income off taxes.

Is it that the local governments should generate money to fund their projects?

If you look at the budget of Lagos State, about N540 Billion would be generated in the state, you must resemble your parents, they should learn that from the state and it would have multiplier effects on the state. We should appeal to our people to pay their taxes. I always tell people that in those days if you didn’t pay your taxes, you would not even get a wife because the people believed that if you could not pay your tax, then you could not feed your wife. If all taxable adults in Lagos State pay their taxes, you could imagine what the state would be getting, we would not even depend on the Federal Government anymore.

What is your opinion about the way budgets are being implemented with emphasis on the budget of Lagos State this year?

When you talk about budgets generally, their implementation could be a big problem. But when you talk of Lagos State, let us go back to as far as the period of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande as governor of the state, I would say that we have been very lucky. From him, we moved to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, an economic guru, a financial giant, you could see how he managed the state as governor from 1999 to 2007, then to former governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, and now to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who knows much about financial management. From inception of his administration, he has been saving N3 billion monthly for the state and he has been investing the money in the system. Also, if you look at the tax net of the state, 1% of it has not been captured, for you to know the concept of what would happen in the year. By the time the man would implement the budget for of this year, people would now see that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not make a mistake by discovering talented people, who were not known before. With a budget of N622 Billion and with the size of Lagos State, the resources of the state, you could see that the budget is not too big. I happen to be a member of the House Committee on Budget and Economic Planning and I saw that the Governor has good intentions and the control mechanism is there already. If you listen to the Chairman of the House Committee on Budget, Hon. Rotimi Olowo, he said the spending would depend on what each ministry generates apart from the socially oriented ministries. He also said that the committee would not wait till the end of the year before checking the books of the ministries, he said that it would be a quarterly review and with that, the people of Lagos would see the benefits of this administration within a short time.
As a matter of fact, go round the state and see the way Public Works Corporation (PWC) and the state Ministry of Works have been working. Roads on in Acme, Ayobo/Ipaja have been repaired. I have written PWC about roads in my area too and they said that they have zero tolerance for potholes and this would have impacts on traffic in the state.
Once roads are free, then you would see the difference, the state government has said that each local government and Local Council Development Area (LCDA) in the state would build two roads totalling 114 roads that would be economically viable and they would connect everywhere. These would add to the land and economic value of the state. I am very optimistic about the 2016 budget.

Is there any sanction by your committee for any council chairman?

That decision is for the House to take, the committee could only recommend to the House based on our discoveries.

What can you say concerning the Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC)?

That is under the Federal Government because we have two governments under the federating units; the federal and state governments, the local government is a creation of the Assembly. People do not know much about this, if Lagos State likes it can create 1,000 local governments. That is why we are saying that it is not the business of the Federal Government to interfere with that. We must operate fiscal federalism, they cannot kill our creation of over 10 years.