The CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele is back again in the news (Not like he ever left). The CBN Governor was a keynote speaker at the annual Bankers Committee Dinner and delivered a speech about alternative source of revenue for the government.

In providing an alternative to source of revenue for the government, the CBN Governor suggested that the government imposes a telecoms tax for phone call conversations above 3 minutes. He also suggested that we introduce a tax on properties. Here is CBN Governor Emefiele in his own words;

“There are several ways we can raise additional revenue to finance the increased expenditure that is needed to engender fast and sustainable growth in the economy,” Emefiele said.

“I think we can consider introducing a negligible telecom surcharge to be entirely borne by the initiator of a call. In order to protect the poor and vulnerable amongst us, we could structure it to only take effect after the third minute of talk.

“Some analyses have indicated that the government could earn about N100 billion per annum from this alone. Obviously this surcharge will mainly be borne by middle and upper class people since I do not know many poor people who make calls for more than 3 minutes!”