GGA-Nigeria’s reform manual on Mainstreaming Good Governance into Nigerian Tax Reform offers a fresh and provocative perspective on taxation. It seeks to stimulate dialogue on the most important governance interventions and the sequencing required to actualise Nigeria’s tax reform objectives.
The book reiterates the importance of an effective tax system, especially for an oil-dependent economy like Nigeria. With Nigeria collecting about 6% of its half a trillion-dollar economy in tax – far short of emerging economy peers – the governments needs a targeted effort to capture more of the tax opportunities that abound in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
Though Nigeria is a relatively strong state, social-service delivery remains dismal owing to inadequate, unstable and poorly managed revenue collection, which largely accounts for its citizens’ negative attitude to tax.
Oladiran (Ola) Bello obtained both his MPhil and PhD degrees in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and also holds a First Class BSc degree from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He has worked for organisations including the United Nations (New York) and Management Systems International (Washington DC), Merchant International Group (London) and Arthur Andersen (later KPMG). Dr Ola Bello has more than 10 years of experience in research and policy advisory, including on governance and extractive sector reform; sustainable development; and international development cooperation (including in EU-Africa relations). He spent three years with FRIDE (Spain) managing a donor-funded programme on the EU’s role in managing fragility and resource governance in select African countries. In 2012-2015, he was Head, Governance of Africa’s Resource Programme (GARP) at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and also functioned as head of SAIIA’s Cape Town office. Ola is spearheading GGA's technical support to Nigerian reform, including delivering ethics training for senior Nigerian judicial officers and change-makers (2017-2019). He's also working to expand GGA's role as in-country resource centre for multilateral consultative missions to Nigeria's ministries and parastatals. These missions include the UNECA/AU mineral sector governance team.
