The battle for revenue derivation principle in Nigeria rose to a higher pedestal on Thursday as the Lagos State House of Assembly passed the Value Added Tax Bill.
The Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa directed the Acting Clerk of the House, Mr. Olalekan Onafeko, to transmit a clean copy to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu for assent.
The House also passed the Anti-Open Grazing Bill that prohibits open cattle grazing in the state.
Lagos becomes the second state in Nigeria, after Rivers, to pass a bill authorizing the state to collect VAT, instead of the Federal Government.
The passage of the bill followed a public hearing on the legislation on Wednesday, conducted by the State House of Assembly. Speakers at the event, including labour leaders, supported the state government in its move to collect VAT in state.
The VAT bill was titled ‘Bill for a Law to impose and charge Value Added Tax on certain goods and services, provide for the administration of the Tax and for Related Matters’.
With this, Lagos, like Rivers, has wrested the collection of VAT from the Federal Inland Revenue Service.
The Anti-Open Grazing bill is part of the agreement by governors of the 17 southern states to prohibit the practice of openly grazing cows in the area because of the security issues that have arisen from the practice.
Bandits, masquerading as herders have turned the farmlands into killing and kidnapping fields, as they lay in wait of farmers and residents of the towns and villages in the south.
The Act proposed, among others, a jail term of 21 years for any herder seen carrying a gun in the state.
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