UN: Stamp duties can help Nigeria fund SDGs

The United Nations Millennium Campaign believes Nigeria can fund Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by leveraging on Agriculture, solid minerals, stamp duties and other taxes eluding the tax man.

Hilary Ogbonna, acting region coordinator, Africa, United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC), who spoke to Osasu Igbinedion on The Osasu Show, said stamp duties can also help raise funding.

“When you look at the MDGs, which was mainly focused around donor funds, official development assistance, the SDGs unfortunately are looking more at global partnerships and how countries can domestically use innovative sources to fund development,” Ogbonna said.

“Before the SDGs were adopted in September, the world met in July, in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, at the third financing for development conference, where it agreed on a lot of parameters on how countries can on their own generate resources that they would fund the SDGs with.

“Nigeria was a party to that. In a way, I think these are challenging times for every country, and this also calls on country that have only one line, one channel of resources like Nigeria, in terms of oil, to begin to look at other parts of economy like Agriculture, solid minerals.

“The SDGs are very clear, in goal one, as well as in goal two combined, talking about Agriculture and food security, and this is the time when, even in our quest to implement goals one and two on poverty and hunger, we can actually create jobs.”

“We can create jobs by looking at how we support small farmers, we can create food by how we support women, the teeming women population, by also ensuring access to farmland, that people who are willing and able to farm are able to access arable farmlands.”

The UNMC coordinator added that Nigeria could get necessary liquid cash by extending taxation to less conventional areas, including luxury items.

“In terms of liquid cash, we have also seen some countries imposing taxes on a number of things that usually escape the tax man; property taxes, which you know is not really popular in this part of the world.

“Taxation on luxury goods, we have also seen airline taxations in many parts of the world, these are innovative ways that countries can raise funding.

“You know recently, even in Nigeria, we have seen government pushing for the stamp duties, which has always been there and nobody implements it.

“I want to believe that a country like Nigeria, economic giant, Africa’s number one economy, can actually by diversifying its economy raise funding that it would use to implement the SDGs.”

As part of the SDGs, Ogbonna also spoke oneducation in Nigeria, and the the need to eliminate user levies, which stop education from being really free, as expected.

He said most citizens sleep  on their rights, paying fees they ought to stand up against, adding that free education is pivotal  to the achievement of the SDGs.