Photo credit: Premium Times
When most people get into government positions, the perfumed allure of office much more often than not conquers them. So that, even if they had any good programmes, they tend to forget such before they become yesterday men.
However, the basic fact is that most of them tend to suffer from an abject poverty of ideas. I am not surprised at that because even some workers’ representatives, if they get elected or appointed to a political post, tend to forget where they are coming from.
It is natural, trained people must have good table manners. When one is eating, they don’t talk!
That is why I always love it when, apart from being rich in terms of experience, someone shows that they are rich in ideas.
Let’s doff our hats for the honourable minister of finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, for bringing forth that very innovative idea.
OK, you are yet to hear.
Beggars will soon start paying taxes. Well, there’s nothing they can do about it.
If they try, like beggars in Aminata Sow’s book, to protest, we will deal drastically with them.
Maybe the honourable minister, on her way to the lecture yesterday, had time to visit Kano street in Lagos or how else could she have known that they made millions?
When government is serious in looking for money, it will not care whether some people are the Flotsams and Jetsams of society. The money is the most important thing.
The Bible says money is the root of all evil. Yes, it said so,but not government money. Even Jesus Christ paid tax.
You see the usefulness of the idea is that the rich give alms, possibly to atone for their sins, to beggars. If government is finding it difficult to collect taxes from the rich, then let’s start from the dregs of society.
When we do that, those small potatoes will be forced to raise how much they are collecting from the fat cats. After all, they need the beggars.
Could you believe that some of those seemingly small fries even have POS machines? They are stinking millionaires.
It is when we collect from those onibara, beggars, that we will fashion out a way of collecting taxes from the tussocks.
We may not even need to collect from the rich again. By the time we collect from the beggars, there will be enough money to carry out government programmes and pay salaries
What else?.
The collection of taxes from beggars has some other benefits. The first one is that since the beggars will become cash cows for the government, they will not be chased away by government again. B’enu ba je, oju a ti, you can’t spite the fingers that feed you.
The other one is that it will provoide employment for job seekers. This is because workers will be needed to collect the taxes. Even the minister said they were going to use the services of some firms to help in the collection of taxes.
Brilliant!
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