In particular the decision to call on citizens to take charge of funding governance is tantamount to calling on citizens to rescue their country and its economy from collapse in the wake of low revenue from petroleum and decades-long reckless looting of the nation’s resources.
There is no room for failure over FIRS’s attainment of its 2016 target of N4.97 trillion to the Federal Government. This is not a joke. We need everybody to do his/her beat to ensure that everybody contributes (sic) to the achievement of the target. The nation will depend on FIRS to fund the budget. We need the money to stabilize the economy. –Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, Finance Minister
Democracy is founded on the principle that the moral authority of government is derived from the consent of the governed. That consent is not very meaningful, however, unless it is informed. When a government makes decisions in secret, opportunity for corruption increases and accountability to the people decreases. That is why government transparency should be a priority. When official meetings are open to citizens and the press, when government finances are open to public scrutiny, and when laws and the procedures for making them are open to discussion, the actions of government enjoy greater legitimacy.-Jerry Brito
The first section of this article stated that decades of military rule during the period of oil boom and lack of will by civilian rulers to move beyond military notion of governance distanced the citizenry from government. It argued that the decision by rulers-both military and civilian-to use funds from petroleum as they wanted without having to be accountable to citizens created a conducive condition for corruption at the level of governance and created lack of concern for public accountability on the part of the average citizen who saw government as the business of those in whatever form of power was in vogue from time to time in an ethos of easy revenue from non-renewable fossil energy. The piece concluded that now that the chicken seems to have come to roost in respect of the seeming omnipotence and omnipresence of oil revenue, those saddled with a depleted economy after decades of venality in governance have found solace in asking citizens to pay taxes to fund governance and restore the country’s damaged economy. It ended by stating that payment of tax is larger than citizens’ obligations to government; it should strengthen the culture of accountability while enhancing citizens’ ownership of their government.
Today’s piece will focus on what government at all levels should do, not only to encourage citizens to pay taxes but also to make them see clearly how their taxes are used for the purpose for which they are meant. It will also make suggestions on how citizens can ensure that they are not taken for granted by those they have chosen to use their taxes on their behalf for national security and physical, social and human development. The overarching thesis for today’s concluding piece is that democracy is larger than choosing leaders at elections; it is about nurturing an open government for the purpose of making citizens have and grow confidence in the process by which they are governed by involving citizens to participate fully in their governance.
The onus of initiating and sustaining Change or the New Politics promised before the 2015 election by General Mohammed Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) is on both the government and the voters. With relation to the government, it is salutary that it has decided to outgrow the laissez-faire approach to government as an opportunity for those in power to spend revenue without any reference to citizens. In particular the decision to call on citizens to take charge of funding governance is tantamount to calling on citizens to rescue their country and its economy from collapse in the wake of low revenue from petroleum and decades-long reckless looting of the nation’s resources. But let nobody be fooled; the best way to encourage citizens to pay their taxes is to let them see in unmistakable terms that the taxes they pay are used to improve the quality of their life. And the most assured way to make this happen is for those in government-executive, legislative, and judiciary-to be accountable in all they do.
The old culture of spending without explanation and without involving citizens in discussion of budget projects is not acceptable in an ethos in which citizens fund governance through tax. The old habit on the part of military and civilian rulers that oil money belonged to nobody and could be used as rulers feel has been made obsolete by the new reality thrown up by precipitous fall in the price of oil. There is no better time for those in power under the Government of Change to remember the old saying: “He/she who pays the piper calls the tune.”Political office holders need to realise that citizens need evidence of accountability at every stage of spending their tax money. The example of Lagos State in the last sixteen years of Tinubu, Fashola, and now Ambode with making tax money work for those who made it possible is a model that the federal government in particular should borrow and build on, especially the readiness of the Lagos State government to mix provision of elite and mass goods and services.
As the federal government goes the way of e-governance, it must seize the opportunity of improving access of citizens to information about the activities of government. Such information should include budget details and how funds are used on projects, apart from aspects of governance that have to be classified for the security of the state. Citizens are not likely to (and should not) tolerate the present situation of continued impunity by those in government.
For example, despite the directive by President Buhari that the number of police officers being used as personal guards or Maiguards for members of those designated as Big men and women in the country be stopped or curtailed, there are still hundreds of policemen sitting in front of houses beside drivers of former members of legislature and even of the executive. Former legislators are still driving cars with NASS plate tags almost one year after they had ceased to be lawmakers. Citizens who pay tax to fund governance would prefer that the police are used to provide security for all citizens, and not just for a handful of citizens who happened to have been minister or legislator in the past.
On the part of citizens, agreeing to pay tax to save the polity and economy should be seen as the return of the public, which had been repressed, ignored, or marginalised for over four decades of free flow of revenue from rent collection by the government. Citizens have to insist on not just executive accountability but also on legislative and judicial accountability.
Citizens should be given opportunity in discussion of salaries and allowances to those in governance at all levels. Full disclosures on federal budgeting, state, and local government budgeting should be high on the menu of government-citizen relations.
For too long, citizens have been denied benefits of having local governments through failure of states to conduct regular local government elections and the propensity of governors to hamstring local governments by holding on to statutory allocations to the third tier of government under the guise of managing state/local government joint accounts. Both governments and citizens should listen to and learn from Donald Gordon’s admonition on transparent governance: “Openness, accountability, and honesty define government transparency. In a free society, transparency is government’s obligation to share information with citizens. It is at the heart of how citizens hold their public officials accountable. Governments exist to serve the people. Information on how officials conduct the public business and spend taxpayers’ money must be readily available and easily understood.”
Citizens must not only remain steadfast in their support to fight corruption; they must also be vigilant to the extent that they can prevent corruption by insisting that they are fully consulted before decisions to spend their tax money are made. The power to take decisions about the polity and economy should not rest in the era of modern democracy on only elected representatives. There is no better time to push the tenets of modern democracy and citizen participation than under an administration that has pledged to uphold high moral and ethical standards in governance.
– Concluded
NATION
END
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