Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi, has launched a scathing attack on President Bola Tinubu and his administration for imposing the cybersecurity levy on Nigerians.
Obi’s criticism, aired on Wednesday through a series of posts on his X handle, denounces the government’s move as exploitative and detrimental to the nation’s economic recovery and growth.
The introduction of a 0.5 per cent levy on bank transactions, managed by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) as mandated by the Cybersecurity Act, has sparked widespread outrage.
Obi lambasted the Tinubu Administration for what he perceives as a focus on draining the resources of a struggling economy rather than nurturing it back to health.
He accused the government of implementing policies that further impoverish citizens and questioned the role of the ONSA as a revenue-collecting center.
Obi emphasized that burdening Nigerians with additional taxes, such as the Cybersecurity Levy, exacerbates their economic distress and contradicts the government’s pledge to streamline the tax system and reduce the tax burden.
Obi highlighted the detrimental impact of the levy on businesses’ trading capital, noting that it would erode their already dwindling resources, worsened by Naira devaluation and high inflation rates.
He underscored the impracticality of expecting citizens to bear the brunt of funding all government activities, emphasizing that such policies not only impoverish the populace but also diminish the country’s competitiveness in the global economic arena.
Expressing disbelief at the timing of the levy’s introduction, Obi criticized the government for adding to the tax burden at a time when it should be reducing taxes to combat inflation.
He questioned the government’s rationale for implementing new taxes and raised concerns about the widening scope of the NSA’s responsibilities to include revenue collection.
