The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) of killing Nigerians with taxes and tariffs.
The PDP helmsman also accused them of being careless about relieving the plight of the country’s poor, suffering population.
Secondus, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Ike Abonyi, lamented that while other world leaders had been putting modalities in place to cushion the biting effects of COVID-19 on their citizens, Buhari was busy heaping more burdens on the populace with his endless taxes and tariffs.
“This action is strangulating the nation’s economy, killing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and causing investors’ flight to other neighbouring countries where the business environment is conducive and friendly.
“I find it laughable and contradictory that a regime that increases people’s taxes and hikes prices indiscriminately at this pandemic period is talking of lifting some Nigerians out of poverty with such draconian and insensitive policies that earned the country the ignoble title of capital of the world poor under the watch of President Buhari,” he said.
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Secondus listed some of the taxes of this government on the Nigerian people that had increased their hardship to include fuel hike, electricity tariff, bank charges and increased Value Added Tax (VAT), among others.
“In September 2019, this government hiked VAT rate payable in Nigeria from 5 to 7.5%; after January 2016, introduction of N50 stamp duty by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); again, in September 2019, it imposed charges on cash deposits and withdrawals above N500,000 for individuals and N3 million for corporate accounts.
“After February 2016, 45 percent increase in electricity tariffs with a claim that it will result in a better power supply services, the regime has just announced another upward review of electricity tariffs from July 1, 2020 with power supply getting worse than ever,” Secondus said.
The PDP boss said that nothing underscored the insensitivity of this administration to the welfare of its citizens than that they kept on loading the people with more and more burdens.
Secondus, however, charged Buhari to review every taxable item in the country downwards in the spirit of the pandemic, plus the fact that the incompetence of the regime had plunged Nigerians into avoidable hardship arising from insecurity, terrorism, banditry and herdsmen.