Nyesom Wike, minister of the federal capital territory (FCT), says big men (rich people) residing in Abuja remain the nation’s capital’s biggest problem in voluntary tax compliance for development.
Wike spoke on Thursday at the inauguration of the newly constructed collector road CN2 (Zakari A. Kyari street) in Abuja by President Bola Tinubu to celebrate his second year in office.
Tinubu was represented by Benjamin Kalu, deputy speaker of the house of representatives.
The minister said big men residing in the FCT do not like paying taxes, while they voluntarily pay their taxes and ground rent in London, the United States of America and other foreign countries.
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He noted that the CN2 road and other connecting roads in Katampe district were executed with taxes and ground rents paid by responsible residents.
“For those who said we sealed their houses for not paying a ground rent, see the value; see the product of paying a ground rent,” Wike said.
“If you don’t pay, nobody will provide this infrastructure because the only thing the city has is just to collect taxes.
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“People say Abuja is rich. How rich is it?”
He said what Abuja collects from the federation account is one percent of what is due to the federal government every month.
“So, assuming that the federal government gets N800 billion every month. One percent of N800 billion is N8 billion and N8 billion is not enough to pay salaries,” he said.
“Our salary today is not less than N13 billion because of the minimum wage increase.
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“So, if we only depend on one percent of what the federal government gets every month, it means that we can only pay salaries, not to talk about carrying out infrastructure.
“That’s why we’re very aggressive in saying you cannot enjoy infrastructure free of charge. You have to pay.
“It has nothing to do with ‘I belong to party A; I belong to party B; I belong to party C.”
He reminded FCT residents, particularly the rich, that whoever has land in the territory and has not paid ground rent should pay or their names would be published as defaulters in newspapers.
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