Awonuga said in a statement in Lagos on Thursday that the “Tax and Levy Amended Order 2015’’, which was signed by a former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had created a lot of confusion in the taxes and levies regime.
According to Awonuga, the order has made the environment harsh for business and not minding government’s Ease of Doing Business programme of the government.
He said that in Nigeria today, most of the regulatory bodies had left the regulatory functions and now turned to revenue generating bodies and bringing about multiple taxation and regulation.
Awonuga noted that the telecommunications operations are not isolated to the ecosystem, as the cost of running business in Nigeria, especially the telecommunications is triple the cost of running same in Ghana and neighbouring countries.
“Almost all agencies of government are after telecommunications, why? We cannot afford to have crisis in the industry because we operate one network in all networks.
“We call on the Federal Government to look into the issue of Tax and Levy Amended Order 2015 signed by the former Minister of Finance in the last administration, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,’’ local media reports quoted Awonuga as saying.