Fashola urges elite to pay
tax
By Sun News Publishing
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
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Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN)
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has charged
the elite to imbibe the culture of paying taxes without compulsion,
insisting that only a voluntary fulfillment of the civic duty
would take Lagos to the desired heights.
Governor Fashola who spoke at the Christmas Eve gathering
of both the Island Club and Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos said
the elite who were the natural leaders and pace setters of
society, had no excuse and must say a definitive farewell
to tax evasion.
He emphasized that the elite must begin to show the light
through prompt tax payment so that a collective path could
be charted to greater peace, prosperity and security.
The governor said if the 2007 budget achieved a 75 percent
success, despite money and resources being clearly limiting
factors, a lot more would be achieved with more resources.
Fashola restated that the brighter rewarding future would
not drop magically from the skies but from hardwork, perseverance
and prompt payment of taxes and other dues which were the
hallmark of participatory democracy.
In the next four years, the governor revealed the present
administration intended to complete the reconstruction, expansion
and the modernization of at least 100 strategic roads across
the state.
Also planned, with work already begun, was the construction
of 15,000 new classrooms in public schools in addition to
massive rehabilitation of existing ones.
“We plan to have provided thousands of new affordable
houses both through our new mortgage scheme and direct construction
of houses by government as well as stimulation of hundreds
of new businesses through expansion of the capital base of
our new Eko Micro credit scheme to empower indigent persons
and artisans to set up their own businesses,” he added.
Fashola also said the need to be self reliant by increasingly
reducing the dependency of the state on the statutory allocation
remained the vision and driving force of the his administration.
The governor in illustrating graphically the imperative for
voluntary payment of taxes spoke about the contradictions
of a tale of two cities where the haves and the have-nots
lived.
According to the governor, while the have-nots lived in abject
poverty and squalor, the other side lived in a more habitable
environment. However the desired peace, he said might elude
the privileged because of the social deviants from the deprived
side of town
He said society could therefore be indifferent to the plight
of the other half of this city at its collective peril because
already in the supposedly secluded environment of Victoria
Island and Ikoyi, thousands of okada riders constituted a
daily menace.
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