The Human Right, Liberty Access and Peace Defenders Foundation (HURIDE) has condemned President Muhammadu Buhari led federal government over its continuous multiple taxation on Nigerians.
The human right body in a statement issued in Abuja, said the indirect taxation was obnoxious, ill timed, anti-people, sacrilegious, evil, lacked economic vision and therefore cannot stand.
The statement signed by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, HURIDE, Dede Uzor A. Uzor, said the taxation would increase the sufferings, hunger and poverty of Nigerians instead of generating prosperity as was promised during President Muhammed Buhari’s re-election campaign.
The federal government in the last few weeks has said it would increase Value Added Tax (VAT), from five percent to seven percent, introduce cashless policy which will make both depositors and recipients to pay two percent in every N500,000.
The federal government also expressed its intention to reintroduce toll gates in all the federal roads, with South East said to be having 60 percent of the toll gates.
It has also indicated its plan to impose communication tax, which will make every GSM user to pay for every call he or she makes.
These, said the right group, coupled with the border closure which has been biting hard on the citizens would increase the sufferings of Nigerians to an astronomical proportion.
With these policies, said HURIDE, the price of food and other essential commodities were already going up, stressing that the poverty level in the country were being increased on daily basis.
HURIDE noted that some of these, if not all the policies of the federal government were targeted against the South East and South South geopolitical zones, stressing that if what was being posted in social media was true, about 60 percent of the proposed toll gates were located in South East alone, while the North with higher number of federal road networks in the country and more budgetary allocation on road construction annually would be less than 30 percent of the toll gates.
The same, HURIDE said was applicable to cashless policy in which all states in the South East, except Ebonyi State were included, but only few states were involved in the North.
The group condemned another Operation Python Dance by the Military high command especially during festivity which it said was “sacrilegious and clear disregard for the Christian dominated South East”, lamenting that the previous exercises showed that the period was the time the military slaughter the many youths of the zone as were the cases at Nkpor in Anamtbra State and Aba in Abia State in the past.
The group called on all the stakeholders in the East to resist this entrenched marginalisation of the zone by the APC led federal government, insisting that Operation Python Dance should be taken to crisis torn States like Borno, Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara and among others.
It said, “We want to place the international community on notice over the continued policy of bloodbath and marginalisation of the South East by Buhari led federal Government. The International community should prevail on the federal government from going on with these unfriendly and obnoxious policies”.
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