Nigerians talk a lot—reason FIRS boss Fowler supports 9 % charge on phone call

“Nigerians talk a lot on the phone; they even talk more than is required so for them to have capacity or revenue to talk that much, I don’t see any harm in paying a little bit more to government.”

Those are the words of the Federal Inland Revenue Service chairman Babatunde Fowler in an interview with TheCable on the sideline of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group at Transcorp Hilton, ABUJA.

According to him, Ghana introduced a 2% education tax and used it to fund their universities.

“That is why Nigerians are now going to university in Ghana. Ghana didn’t look for aid, they did it by themselves.”

The National Assembly is proposing a 9% charge for using telecommunication services.

The Federal Executive Council proposed a 2.2% increase in value-added tax.

Borno Senator Ali Ndume first proposed the bill.