Tax reform bills: Go to negotiation table – Oshiomhole tells Govs
The Senator representing Edo North, Adams Oshiomhole, has called on governors opposing the new tax bills introduced by President Bola Tinubu to get on the negotiation table.
Oshiomhole made this call on Wednesday while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme.
the new tax bills introduced have been enveloped in widespread controversy and sparked scathing criticisms and stiff opposition from many, including the 36 state governors under the aegis of the National Economic Council, NEC.
The 19 governors in northern Nigeria have also emphatically rejected sections of the bills and called for the withdrawal of the bills from the National Assembly.
Reacting to the opposition by the governors, Oshiomhole said withdrawing the bills means closing the debate, adding that it is better debated at public hearings.
“We are making these laws for the Nigerian people.
“And therefore it is the Nigerian people who should look at these things constructively and say: ‘Is it in our interest?’
“But in the real world, nobody gets what he wants; you get what you negotiate and it is more so in a democracy,” he said.
The former Edo State governor also said when debates assume ethnic and religious lines, the first casualty is truth and reason, dismissing the insinuations that the bills when become laws would favour one region against another.
The lawmaker said a society can be changed either by resolution or reforms, adding that the president has the right to initiate tax reforms.
The former President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, however, said the president should not expect the bills to return to him exactly the way they were presented to the National Assembly.
“I am not a stammerer and debate is for those who can argue. And that is what the parliament is about.
“The good thing is that the president has not sent to us a law; what he has sent to us is a set of proposals under a bill, for us to look at, discuss, debate, if necessary, negotiate, and alter it as we want and pass to him a piece of legislation or bill that attract the two chambers of the National Assembly.
“I will be surprised if the president thinks that whatever he forwarded to the National Assembly, will be back the way he proposed it. Even the Appropriation Act, it never goes back the way it came in. I do not know.
“It will be a sad day for democracy if we get to a point in which whatever bill the executive brings to the National Assembly, the National Assembly stamps it and returns it to the executive the way it brought it,” he added.
