Nasarawa governor says President Tinubu listened to governors’ concerns and revised the VAT proposals while state revenues have risen sharply

Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State on Saturday, August 8, 2026, in Lafia, praised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for listening to concerns over the original Value Added Tax proposals, saying the subsequent changes to the tax reform protected Nigerians from additional pressure during a period of high inflation.

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Sule made the remarks while receiving the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, and members of the Renewed Hope Ambassadors National Media Tour team at the Nasarawa State Government House.

The delegation was in the state as part of a nationwide inspection of federal and state infrastructure projects, following its earlier visit to Benue State.

The governor said he had openly challenged the original VAT proposal because he believed increasing the tax burden when inflation was already high could have placed further strain on households and businesses.

Sule recalled that the original proposal envisaged raising VAT from 7.5 per cent to 10 per cent and eventually 15 per cent over several years.

The proposed increases became a major point of contention among governors, particularly those who feared the impact on consumers and businesses in less economically developed states.

“When the president was misled about taxes, I criticised the matter openly,” Sule said, explaining that President Tinubu subsequently directed him to engage with Zacch Adedeji, Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, and Taiwo Oyedele, who chaired the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms.

Sule said the engagement allowed the governors’ concerns to be incorporated into the revised legislation.

“We made the changes because as at January 1, 2025, VAT would have been 10 per cent at the time. Inflation was about 30 per cent,” he said.

His account reflects an earlier stage of the tax reform debate, when governors resisted elements of the proposed legislation before reaching an agreement with the Federal Government on adjustments. By April 2025, Sule had said the revised bills reflected changes demanded by governors and that the states were comfortable with the version before the National Assembly.

For Sule, the episode was less about political confrontation than about the value of speaking frankly within government.

“I come from the business angle; I cannot allow our party to make a mistake. And luckily for us, we have a president who listens. He listened,” he said.

The governor argued that political loyalty should not prevent public officials from pointing out policies they believe could have unintended consequences. He also urged the media tour team to apply the same standard of scrutiny to state governments, particularly when examining whether public resources were being converted into visible infrastructure.

“There is a way that you have to be able to find a way to commend your leaders when they do right. But it goes both ways,” Sule said.

He added that governors should take the infrastructure inspections seriously because increased public revenues should be matched by greater accountability.

That argument formed part of a broader account Sule gave of Nasarawa’s finances and development programme. He said the state’s monthly federal allocation had risen from roughly N3.8 billion to N4.5 billion before the removal of fuel subsidy to between N14 billion and N16 billion currently.

Sule attributed the increase largely to the redistribution of resources previously absorbed by fuel subsidy payments, arguing that President Tinubu accepted the political cost of removing the subsidy and thereby released more funds to the three tiers of government.

“In the first four years, everybody knows Nigeria was sharing anywhere between N590bn to about N620bn monthly as total FAAC allocation,” he said.

For Nasarawa, he said, the difference had created greater room for investment in roads, bridges and other public infrastructure.

Sule said his administration had spent about N90 billion on infrastructure without taking a new bank loan, adding that much of the expenditure had already been settled.

Among the projects he highlighted were a combined overhead and underground flyover costing N16.7 billion, the N7.1 billion dualisation of Akwanga Township, the N6.6 billion Akwanga underpass, the N5.6 billion dualisation of Shendam Road, the N3.3 billion stormwater channel at Amba Bridge and the N11.4 billion Keffi flyover.

The figures form part of Sule’s broader case that higher federal transfers have translated into visible state-level investment. Nasarawa’s fiscal capacity has expanded considerably in recent years, with the state’s 2025 budget standing at N384 billion, compared with an average budget of about N90 billion when Sule assumed office.

The governor also pointed to developments beyond conventional infrastructure, particularly the state’s growing role in Nigeria’s solid minerals industry.

Nasarawa recently became home to a major lithium processing facility in Endo community, Nasarawa Local Government Area. The plant, inaugurated by President Tinubu in July, has a reported processing capacity of 6,000 metric tonnes per day and an annual capacity of about three million metric tonnes.

The Federal Government has presented the investment as part of its drive to move Nigeria away from exporting raw minerals towards domestic processing and value addition.

Sule credited the administration’s local-processing policy for helping to attract such investment, while also highlighting vocational training centres offering instruction in 12 trades and a post-retirement skills programme.

He said the state had also expanded tertiary healthcare facilities across its three senatorial districts, including a specialist hospital under construction in Akwanga.

The infrastructure and investment claims were presented against the backdrop of the media tour’s stated purpose: to see projects on the ground rather than simply reproduce official accounts.

Onanuga said the delegation was deliberately visiting projects to establish whether government claims corresponded with physical realities.

“We want to verify federal projects, verify state projects, so that people can know that the reports are not just a waste of time, but were done in good faith to really develop our country,” he said.

The exchange in Lafia therefore offered a glimpse into the more complicated relationship between federal reforms and state-level implementation.

While Sule remains strongly supportive of Tinubu’s economic direction, his account of the VAT debate also underlined that support did not always mean accepting every proposal without challenge.

The episode has since become part of the wider story of Nigeria’s tax overhaul, which sought to simplify the tax system, improve revenue collection and alter how tax proceeds are distributed.

For Sule, the eventual compromise demonstrated the value of allowing policy concerns to be raised before reforms take effect.

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His message to the media tour was equally direct: increased public resources should bring increased public scrutiny, and the most convincing measure of reform remains what Nigerians can see and experience in their communities.