By Dr. Robert Ngwu
The recent article, “2027: No Tax Is No Solution — Reality, Not Propaganda, Must Guide Enugu,” proceeds from a fundamental misunderstanding of Chief Uche Geoffrey Nnaji’s position on taxation.
Chief Nnaji has never argued that government does not require revenue, nor has he suggested that taxation should be abolished. His position is considerably more straightforward: Enugu must end senseless taxation, stop taxing poverty and cease placing disproportionate burdens on traders, artisans, transporters and struggling small businesses in the pursuit of internally generated revenue.
Taxation Must Serve a Purpose
In well-managed economies, taxation is ordinarily connected to identifiable public purposes.
In the United States, property taxes are an important source of funding for public schools, while fuel taxes support highways and transportation infrastructure. Kenya operates a Road Maintenance Levy on fuel to finance road maintenance. Ghana’s GETFund levy supports education. Nigeria’s TETFund levy similarly supports tertiary education, infrastructure and research.
The underlying principle is simple: when government takes money from citizens, there should be a clear economic or social justification for doing so.
What many Enugu residents increasingly encounter, however, is a maze of tickets, permits, daily levies, motor-park charges, MOT and VIO fees, ESWAMA charges and assorted enforcement teams pursuing citizens from one economic activity to another.
Until April 2026, even petty traders without shops — including hawkers and sellers of vegetables and sachet water — were reportedly subjected to daily levies before the government suspended the practice.
That suspension reinforces an important point: not every tax is good taxation. Some taxes impose greater economic and social costs than the revenue they generate.
This is particularly important in an economy where micro, small and medium-sized enterprises constitute the overwhelming majority of businesses and provide most private-sector employment.
These are the businesses government should be helping to grow.
Why should a woman selling vegetables have to make money for government every morning before making enough to feed her family? Why should an artisan struggling to survive face daily collections merely for trying to earn a living?
You cannot tax people out of poverty.
Tax Transportation and Everybody Pays
The consequences extend beyond the person from whom a levy is directly collected.
When government imposes daily charges on buses, taxis and commercial tricycles, operators inevitably transfer those costs to passengers. Enugu has already witnessed increases in transport fares following changes to daily transport e-ticket charges, with operators directly linking the higher fares to those costs.
Tax the bus and the market woman travelling to Ogbete pays.
Tax the Keke and the apprentice travelling to work pays.
Increase the cost of transportation and the cost of moving food, goods and services also rises.
The same economic caution should apply to housing, healthcare and other necessities whose costs ripple through the wider economy.
The Bigger Fiscal Question
There is, however, an even more fundamental question that Enugu citizens are entitled to ask.
For the 24 years preceding the present administration, successive governments in Enugu State built roads and bridges, renovated schools, established universities and other public institutions, constructed the new State Secretariat and major infrastructure, including the Nike–Opi Road, paid salaries and maintained the machinery of government.
They did so at a time when federal allocations were only a fraction of what Enugu receives today.
Historical fiscal records suggest that the cumulative resources available to those administrations over that 24-year period were below approximately ₦1.5 trillion, depending on which federation-account receipts are included.
Compare that with the present fiscal environment.
The current administration’s budgets and projected revenues put the resources available to it within only a few years around the ₦2 trillion mark and beyond, depending on whether FAAC receipts, internally generated revenue, capital receipts, grants and borrowing are included.
The extraordinary growth in federal transfers is not a matter of political conjecture.
Enugu State’s own records show total FAAC receipts of approximately ₦77.97 billion in 2022.
By 2024, actual FAAC receipts had risen to approximately ₦255.67 billion.
Governor Peter Mbah disclosed that Enugu received approximately ₦230 billion from FAAC in 2025, more than 50 per cent above the government’s projection.
The approved 2026 budget projects another ₦387 billion from FAAC.
The progression deserves attention:
2022 — ₦77.97bn
2024 — ₦255.67bn
2025 — about ₦230bn
2026 projection — ₦387bn
Yet this dramatic increase in federal revenue has occurred alongside an aggressive expansion of internally generated revenue, additional charges, increases in existing levies and greater borrowing capacity.
That creates a legitimate public-policy question:
If previous administrations could build roads, schools, universities and major infrastructure, pay salaries and run Enugu State for 24 years with comparatively meagre federal allocations, why should citizens carry heavier tax burdens today when government revenues have increased so dramatically?
More FAAC.
More IGR.
More borrowing.
More taxes and levies.
How are these four reconciled?
Before reaching deeper into the pockets of citizens — particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder — government has an obligation to demonstrate how the unprecedented resources already available to it are being utilised.
Government’s Own IGR Figures Tell an Important Story
The government’s internally generated revenue figures make the argument for indiscriminate taxation even less persuasive.
Enugu announced IGR of approximately ₦406.77 billion in 2025. According to figures released by the government, only about ₦51.5 billion, or 12.6 per cent, came from taxes. Approximately ₦355.2 billion, or 87.4 per cent, was classified as non-tax revenue.
If those figures are accepted, then removing oppressive levies from vulnerable citizens cannot reasonably be portrayed as making Enugu ungovernable.
The government’s own numbers suggest otherwise.
The Right Lesson From Lagos
Lagos did not become Nigeria’s largest subnational economy because it perfected the collection of ₦200 from hawkers.
Its enormous revenue base rests on something much bigger: the concentration of industries, banks, telecommunications companies, technology firms, ports, real estate, commerce and millions of economically productive people.
That is precisely why Chief Uche Geoffrey Nnaji’s industrialisation agenda deserves to be understood in the context of taxation.
Factories create jobs.
Workers earn salaries and pay PAYE.
Industries create suppliers and contractors. Housing demand rises. Transportation and logistics expand. Banks lend. Restaurants and shops gain customers. Property values increase. Commerce grows.
And as economic activity expands, government revenue grows with it.
That is the fundamental difference between revenue extraction and economic development.
One industrial cluster employing thousands of people and supporting hundreds of businesses can generate substantially more sustainable economic value than thousands of agents collecting ₦200, ₦500 and ₦1,000 every day from citizens struggling to survive.
Grow the Economy, and Revenue Will Follow
When Chief Uche Geoffrey Nnaji says “NO MORE SENSELESS TAXATION,” therefore, the message should not be distorted into “no taxation.”
It means: do not tax poverty. Do not punish enterprise. Do not make transportation unnecessarily expensive. Do not suffocate small businesses. Do not subject citizens to multiple enforcement teams. And do not measure economic progress merely by how much government can extract from its people.
There is a better alternative.
Industrialise Enugu. Create factories and jobs. Attract investment. Support small and medium-sized enterprises. Expand commerce. Build productive infrastructure and create wealth.
Then government revenue will rise because the economy producing that revenue is growing.
Government should become richer because its people are becoming richer — not while its people are becoming poorer.
That is the economic choice before Enugu.
Recover. Rebuild. Industrialise.
One Term. One Mission. One Legacy.
