Senators grumble over proposal to tax their allowances

Senators on Thursday grumbled during the debate on the general principles of the 2016 budget proposal when the Chief Whip, Senator Olusola Adeyeye, proposed the taxation of allowances of pol‎itical office holders in Nigeria.
At the resumption on debate of 2016 budget, Senator Adeyeye exemplified that 54 per cent of the $3.8 trillion US budget is sourced from tax.
Adeyeye said: “If we are going to move this country forward, we must go back to what we did in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Nnamdi Azikiwe.
“Nobody in my village will go to his farm until he can produce his tax receipt.
“We need ingenuity to bring this to pass.
“We must begin to tax things like cigarette, alcohol.
“You beat your wife, you pay heavily.
“Text messages cost N3.81 a page.
“If we add just N1 to a page of text message and we say that money belongs to government, we will make billions.
“We must install toll roads, but that is not enough.
“Across the world, when you park at any airport, you pay per hour.
“We must do what the rest of the world does.
“We must begin to tax allowances.
“Nigeria is the only country that shelters the bulk of the earnings of its workers and call them allowances.
“You don’t want your allowances taxed?
“They will be taxed.‎”
At this point senators began to grumble over what Senator Adeyeye said.
They did not want allowances of political office holders taxed.