NIGERIANS AND TINUBU’S SUFFOCATING, FORGED TAX POLICY - Lauretta Onochie

 

NIGERIANS AND TINUBU’S SUFFOCATING, FORGED TAX POLICY

Nigeria is groaning under an economic weight under the Pres. Tinubu dictatorship. At a time when citizens are battling inflation, unemployment, and the rising cost of basic survival, the Tinubu administration’s tax regime has become an additional noose—tightening around households, small businesses, and the productive middle class.

Taxes, in a responsible democracy, are instruments for development. They are meant to be fair, consultative, lawful, and proportionate to citizens’ capacity to pay. What Nigerians are witnessing today, however, is a forged tax policy—one hurriedly assembled, aggressively enforced, and seemingly disconnected from economic realities on the ground.
A Policy Without Compassion or Consent

From multiple levies to increased tariffs and charges, Nigerians are confronted with taxes that appear neither debated nor democratically owned.
The informal sector, which sustains millions, is harassed.
Small and medium enterprises are squeezed to the brink.
Workers whose wages have lost value to inflation are still expected to give more to a system that gives them less.
This approach violates the social contract.

Government cannot continuously extract from a people it has failed to protect from hunger, insecurity, and joblessness.

TAXATION WITHOUT RELIEF IS ECONOMIC PUNISHMENT:

The same administration imposing heavy taxes has:
Removed fuel subsidy without adequate cushioning,
Presides over a weakened naira, and Offers no meaningful social safety net.

The result is predictable:
●Businesses are closing.
●Prices of food and services are skyrocketing.
●Poverty is deepening.
Taxation under such conditions is not reform—it is economic punishment.

TRANSPARENCY DEFICIT AND TRUST EROSION
Nigerians are also asking a fundamental question:
What are these taxes being used for?
Without transparency, accountability, and visible public benefit, taxation becomes coercion. Trust in government erodes when citizens cannot trace their sacrifices to improved healthcare, education, infrastructure, or security.

The Way Forward
Nigeria does not need suffocating tax experiments. It needs:
Broad consultation with states, businesses, labour, the opposition and civil society.
PROGRESSIVE TAXATION, NOT REGRESSIVE LEVIES ON THE POOR

Economic growth first, taxation second
Accountability and openness in revenue use
A government that taxes its people into despair risks losing moral authority.

Finally, Nigerians are resilient, but resilience has limits. A forged, suffocating tax policy imposed on an already struggling population is unjust and unsustainable. The dopey Tinubu administration must urgently rethink its approach—before economic hardship turns into social rupture. Nigeria deserves policies that breathe life into its economy, not ones that suffocate it.

Lauretta Onochie
@Laurestar