RIGHTS GROUP OPPOSE PROPERTY TAX FOR ABUJA

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused Non-Governmental Organization has on Monday opposed the proposed property tax by the Minister of the federal Capital Territory administration Mr. Adamu Aliero and called on the National Assembly to throw out the executive Bill whenever it is presented to both legislative chambers for consideration into a law which will inevitably lead to the introduction of the property tax in the nation’s capital because according to the civil society group, property tax will inflict very extreme poverty related problems on middle income earners and poor Nigerians resident in the nation’s capital.

The minister of the Federal Capital Administration Adamu Aliero had in an interactive session recently with some Senators who paid him a solidarity visit stated that the ministry of the Federal Capital Territory will present to the National Assembly a bill for the introduction of property tax in the Federal Capital Territory with effect from this fiscal year just as he appealed to the legislators to help in processing the bill on time. The minister had stated thus; ‘there is no city in the World where property tax is not collected except in Abuja’.

But the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA kicked against the idea of introducing property tax in Abuja now even when hundreds of thousands of residents who were recently made internally displaced persons from the capital city as a result of the recent obnoxious demolition exercises carried out systematically by the two previous ministers- Nassir El’Ruffai and Aliyu Modibbo Umar are yet to get alternative housing facilities or compensation for the horrendous human rights violations inflicted on them. The Rights Group further stated that the introduction of property tax will obviously affect only the middle income earners working in the various ministries in the public sector and even workers in the private sector resident in Abuja and the neighbouring Federal capital territory satellite towns because the landlords will definitely transfer the cost of the property tax to the end users who are the tenants.

HURIWA challenged the Federal Capital Territory Administration to prove to the residents that the several billions of tax payers funds allocated to the Federal Capital territory administrators since 1999 from the Federal Allocations were judiciously utilized because according to the Rights Group the greater majority of the Abuja municipal residents do not have access to clean portable water, with heaps of refuse in some streets in the Abuja Municipal Area Council even as most satellite communities lack the basic socio-economic facilities necessary for human existence. HURIWA stated that it is an act of political deception for the minister of the federal capital territory to tell Nigerians that he will introduce the property tax in order to use the revenue accruable from it to fix the basic infrastructural facilities in the nation’s capital when audit of how the huge resources received by the previous administrations were spent have not been publicized.

HURIWA asked the minister to also tell Nigerians whether there is any city in the World where the cost of living is as high as what it is in the nations’ capital even as the Rights Group asserted categorically that Abuja is the most expensive place to live in the entire World and that the cost of accommodation in the Federal Capital territory is higher than what is obtainable in any part of the World even as it wonders why the Government instead of redressing the extremely expensive cost of living for most people in Abuja has rather chosen the condemnable path of increasing the hardship afflicting the residents by contemplating the introduction of the so-called property tax which in any case will end up in the private pockets of the Federal Capital Territory administrators just like the over N32 billion said to have disappeared allegedly during the administration of Mallam Nassir El’Ruffai from the sale of Federal Government housing facilities to some civil servants and political appointees of the immediate past administration.

‘The minister must be told in black and white that his idea of introducing property tax in Abuja is retrogressive, reprehensibly anti-poor and will constitute veritable existential burdens to hundreds of thousands of people in the nations’ capital who barely manage to eke out a living. Does the minister not know of what is called Abuja marriage whereby people of opposite sex cohabit in single rooms because of severe dearth of affordable houses in Abuja? Is it not necessary that the current minister should provide palliative measures for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Nigerians who are victims of the horrendous demolition exercises carried out by the last two Federal Capital Territory administrators amid condemnation and protests from a large segment of the Nigerian people?

Citing section 16 [2] of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which provides that the ‘State SHALL direct its policy towards ensuring the promotion of a planned economic development and that the material resources of the nation are harnessed and distributed as best as possible to serve the common good’, HURIWA asserted that the introduction of property tax as contemplated by the Abuja minister will inflict great pain on Nigerians just like the privatisation exercise and is in violation of several sections of the Supreme body of laws governing Nigeria because it will inevitably concentrate the resources of Nigeria in the hands of very few and the property tax will simply be transferred to the poor Nigerians who have weak economic base and will therefore feel the impact of the so-called property tax because the rich who own the property in Abuja will just increase their house rents and the general cost of living will multiply to the disadvantage of the poor. HURIWA called on the Abuja minister to drop the idea of introducing property tax and think of other Human Rights friendly ways of boosting the revenue base of his ministry rather than impose collective punishment on the poor.