Bill Gates: Nigerian Govt Needs To Gain Credibility With Citizens

Bill Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), says the Nigerian government needs to gain credibility with citizens in order to generate more revenue domestically to fund the nation’s development.

Gates said Nigeria still has some of the smallest tax-to-GDP ratios anywhere in the world — and needs to improve the quality of spending to gain credibility with citizens.

Speaking via a teleconference with select journalists, including TheNewera, Gates said the government needs to gain this credibility in order to ensure more taxes are paid, and Nigeria can raise its revenue mobilization to the same level as its peers.

“One challenge that Nigeria has is that the amount of money that the government raises domestically is quite small compared to other countries,” he said.

“A lot of countries at that level will be rising closer to 15 percent of GDP and Nigeria is one of the lowest in the world down at about 6 percent. And so, it is a huge challenge that when you want to fund infrastructure, health, education, all those things, that over time the tax collection, the domestic resources are going to have to go up quite a bit.

“That’s a long-term effort and I think partly by making sure the current resources are spent well like on primary health care, you gain the credibility that the citizens will say, okay, we want more of these things.

“If we don’t raise the quality, you can get into a trap where they don’t feel like paying the taxes actually has that much impact, and so they’re not supportive of that.”