Nigerians paying too little taxes - Bill Gate

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has said tax collection in Nigeria is low.

Gates stated this at a Pan-African youth dialogue on nutrition in Abuja, on Tuesday.

Daily Trust reports that the American business magnate is currently in Nigeria for a series of events.

Speaking at the event, Gates said the low tax collection poses a challenge to adequately financing critical sectors such as health and education.

He said for citizens to gain confidence in the government’s ability to deliver quality healthcare, there must be a commitment to ensure that the funding of health programmes is well-managed.

Bill Gates said, ““Over time, there are plans for Nigeria to fund the government more than it does today. The actual tax collection in Nigeria is actually pretty low.

“If citizens want the education and the health things, as they develop the confidence that these programmes can be very well run, and our foundation is involved with a lot of the exemplars that are showing the way in terms of making sure the money is spent really well, running a very efficient primary health care system where the employees are doing great work, the centres are where they should be, you don’t have underloaded centres or overloaded centres,” Daily Trust reports.