The International Monetary Fund has asked the Nigerian Federal Government to impose new taxes on fuel and telecommunications as part of measures to increase government revenue.
Nigerians are already paying the highest fuel prices in the country’s history after subsidy removal. Nigerians are already paying some of the most expensive data rates on the continent relative to income. Families are already choosing between food and airtime. Markets are closing. Businesses are dying. People are skipping meals.
And the IMF’s solution is to tax fuel and phone calls.
But here is the part they do not put in the press release.
When Western economies face fiscal deficits, the IMF and World Bank recommend Keynesian economics. Invest in public infrastructure. Stimulate growth. Spend your way out of the crisis. Build roads. Fund hospitals. Create jobs. Protect social services.
That advice is for Europe and America.
For Africa the advice is always the same. Cut subsidies. Raise taxes. Borrow more. Devalue your currency. Remove protections. Open your markets.
They have been giving Africa this same prescription since the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s. Nigeria took those prescriptions. Ghana took them. Zambia took them. The result was not development. It was a generation of poverty, collapsed industries, and debt that is still being repaid today.
What changed? Nothing. The prescription is identical. Only the language is softer now.
And Tinubu is listening.
He already removed the fuel subsidy and called it a bold reform. He already floated the naira and watched it collapse. He already borrowed more than any peacetime Nigerian government in recent memory. And now the IMF wants fuel taxes and telecom taxes on top of all of that.
He said Nigerians will pay no matter what. He was not joking.
Meanwhile the same Western institutions lecturing Nigeria about fiscal discipline watched their own governments print trillions of dollars during COVID without a single condition attached. No austerity. No subsidy removal. No tax hikes on the poor. Just money, stimulus, and protection for their citizens.
Africa gets therapy. The West gets medicine.
Our grandparents had Esusu. Communal savings. Rotating credit. Financial systems built from African soil to serve African needs without interest traps and conditionalities. Before the IMF existed, Africans were managing resources, building trade networks, and funding community development without asking Washington for permission.
The game has not changed. Only the names of the institutions running it have.
Tinubu is not being bold. He is being obedient. And every kobo of new tax collected under IMF pressure is a kobo that should have come from sealing the leaks, recovering stolen funds, and making the Mele Kyaris of this country pay back what they took.
Tax the stolen billions first. Then come and talk to ordinary Nigerians about fuel and airtime.
Your phone bill is about to become a political statement.
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