Thursday, December 12, 2024 -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 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.
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