Former Labour Party governorship candidate in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has questioned President Bola Tinubu’s administration over savings from the removal of the petrol subsidy removal.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Rhodes-Vivour faulted the new tax reforms by Mr Tinubu-led administration and accusing it of failing to spend the subsidy savings on people-centred projects.
The politician said, “For government to demand more, it must show what it did with the little. You can’t claim to have saved trillions from subsidy removal and not many meaningful people centric projects or programmes can be pointed to.”
Controversies have trailed the re-gazetted tax law since it became fully operational on January 1, 2026.
Mr Rhodes-Vivour said that while taxes were essential for modern governments to function optimally, they turned citizens into slaves when deployed to fund the material vanities of politicians.
“Taxes are important. Improving our tax-to-GDP ratio, even more so. A functioning state needs resources, and taxation is how modern governments fund development, infrastructure, and social services.
“When those taxes fund the outlandish vanities of the ruling class, it destroys the social contract and turns citizens into working slaves. This, for me, is unacceptable,” he stated.
The politician stressed that taxes devoid of accountability were nothing but tyranny.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Revenue Service had allayed fears that the re-gazetted tax law would adversely affect poor Nigerians, noting more than 95 per cent of poor Nigerians were exempted from paying taxes in the new laws.
“If you listen to us during the public hearing, the focus of these tax laws is to give relief to the poor and make sure that those people at the lower realm feel little impact. That is why I said that we are taxing right, not taxing more. Because if you look at all the exemptions, you’ll see that 95% of the poor are totally exempted. VAT removed for food and transportation. The poor are the most beneficiaries of these tax reforms,” NRS chairman Zacch Adedeji stated during a TV interview on Sunday.
