Whoever has not sat down to understudy the situation of things in Nigeria very closely would end up apportioning blames and pointing accusing fingers in the wrong directions. The angle at which different people view Nigeria and its myriads of problems depends largely on the individual’s understanding of the dynamics of governance. Most times, it is possible for anyone to position himself as an authority on issues in which he has the least knowledge. The most nagging complaints in Nigeria at the moment is that of hike in the price of fuel.

Filling stations are now Mecca of some sort as vehicles loiter all around them like ants around sugar. For years, the most difficult question leaders in Nigeria find difficult to answer is why a nation endowed with so much crude oil would continue to struggle with availability of fuel for local consumption. Yet, the reason is never unconnected with the monstrous corruption dominating everywhere including that sector.

All Nigerians clamour for good governance. They pray for the progress of the entire country in all their worship centers and most times, the leaders are held accountable for poor governance. The failure of successive governments in Nigeria to meet people’s expectations has often led to an influx of many citizens out of the country.

Year in year out, foreign embassies are over saturated with so many people trying to check out. However, if the issue is given an analytical and critical evaluation, the true situation of things will be exposed. Nigerians expect good governance but the question to ask is what percentage of Nigerians contribute to the nation’s development by paying their taxes? Are those who pay their taxes consistently in Nigeria up to 10 per cent?

Of course, there’s extreme poor governance and Nigeria’s leaders are more of locusts on the nation but while it can be said that successive Nigerian governments fail woefully in the discharge of their functions, it is doubtful if the citizens themselves hardly score any pass mark as majority of them never contribute anything towards the country’s development or progress. Since more than ninety percent of Nigeria’s population do not pay tax, Nigeria is denied so much income that could have been accruing from the citizens and the import is that all the national income rests squarely on crude oil and some other exports here and there.

Although the government itself cannot enforce payment of taxes by the citizens since it has not been able to provide adequate employments for the people, what it does is to adopt some indirect means of squeezing funds out of the citizens through Value Added Tax, banks transaction, electricity tariffs, import duties, fuel increase etc.

For states like Lagos, the government has also devised another means of securing large funds through the notorious touts called “Agbero” who rule the Lagos roads as unofficial executives dictating the transport fares and raking in billions of naira annually, a significant part of which goes directly to the government and other people.

It is through such backdoor arrangements Nigeria’s state governments are able to make more income in addition to the federal allocations. The true picture therefore is that when many Nigerians always choose to abandon their own country and relocate to another in the excuse of poor governance, they never ever realise how they themselves contribute to the poor state of their country by refusing to pay their taxes. Besides, whenever they arrive at their new destinations, they are always able to see clearly that most of the achievements of those advanced nations rests squarely on both the government and the citizens playing their parts. They therefore cooperate fully with the tax system in operation in whichever country they go because they are aware there’s no way to escape it.

But while in Nigeria, this is what they refuse bluntly to do as they all evade tax payment under different excuses. Rather than pay taxes, Nigerians complain of lack of job and refuse. Miraculously however, they are able to pay tithes which runs into billions of naira annually.

Ironically, those who receive the tithes are never concerned with turning the large funds over to the government but would rather deploy them into building their own personal empires. Those who pay tithes cannot even send their children to schools founded with their sweats.

All the poor worshippers do is to continue to look towards any incumbent government for overall national development and progress without contributing anything which  can be interpreted as trying to reap where one did not sow. Until all Nigerians realise the dynamics of civic responsibility as the formula for national growth, everyone would keep groaning in pains.

Until they see clearly that if the cooperation they display abroad is replicated here, they will never understand that most of the problems of paucity of funds millitating against national development and necessitating unprecedented loans requests from all over the world would never have been necessary.

Oyewusi, Coordinator of Ethics Watch International Nigeria, wrote from Lagos.