From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Federal Ministry of Finance has begun training for 7,500 graduates to be deployed in rural communities as tax advocates.
Speaking after visiting the first batch of 27 graduates selected via the N-Power scheme in Abuja, Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, said government was bent on increasing revenue by focusing strongly on non-oil sources.
She lamented that majority of taxable Nigerians were not in the tax net, stressing that such a development was completely unacceptable.
She said: “When you look at our population and the population of taxable Nigerians and the number of people and institutions paying tax out of the taxable population, you would see that we have so much to do to get more people to pay tax.
“And that is what we are doing through the 7,500 tax advocates. They will go into the hinterland and rural communities including churches, mosques and schools to sensitize Nigerians to pay tax.
“We need people to know that paying tax is a law and not paying is breaking the law. It is from the tax funds that government provides social services.
“We need to educate people on this and these people are being trained to do just that.
“It is a five-day course and we have graduates from different fields like law, accounting, finance, mathematics and other related fields.
“This training facility is under the Office of the Account General of the Federation and it can take 200 persons at a time.
“But this is the pilot scheme and we have just 27 persons here. Now that we have seen that everything is okay, we’ll go full swing of 200 till we cover the 7,500 persons.
“They registered online and here, we are looking at their training content, materials and environment.”
Adeosun hinted that government was not treating the issue of tax evasion with kid gloves, urging taxable but non-tax paying Nigerians to turn a new leaf as defaulters will face unpalatable consequences.
“Evaders who delay participation after December 31, 2017 will be liable for interest on overdue tax balances,” she said.
She revealed that government would recruit experts to assist in investigating and tracing assets owned by Nigerians.
She said the government targetted at least $1 billion from this initiative, promising that the funds would be judiciously and transparently spent.