Owners of commercial buses plying different routes in the city, pay different amounts of money to touts as taxes every day.
Drivers pay for up to 4 or 5 tickets a day or even more. The taxes are collected by force from them if they refuse to pay, following a fight that is intentionally provoked by the touts to enforce their own rules.
By Sandra Eguagie.
A tout is someone who buys tickets to an event in order to resell them at a profit or who tries to persuade people to buy goods or services typically by direct or persistent approach.
But in the Nigerian context a tout is someone who struggles and fights with public vehicle owners and market men and women in order to issue tickets as a way of collecting taxes for government, for the union and most times for themselves. In another context, touts work for politicians as thugs and agberos.
If you have ever been to the market to buy or sell any commodity in Benin City or any other part in Nigeria, or you have used a commercial bus or taxi, then you will know who a tout is because you would have witnessed their activities.
They control the inter-state transportation sector and also the ‘market sector’ within the states in this country. They work side by side with government officials in collecting taxes for government.
Owners of commercial buses plying different routes in the city, pay different amounts of money to touts as taxes every day.
Drivers pay for up to 4 or 5 tickets a day or even more. The taxes are collected by force from them if they refuse to pay, following a fight that is intentionally provoked by the touts to enforce their own rules.
They can even damage any part of the vehicle without remorse. And also in the market, once you are given a ticket, you pay instantly or else your goods will be seized or destroyed. Market men and women pay up to four or five times a day for different tickets.
But there is other category of touts who collect money in the market because they are the youths in that locality where the market is located.
They don’t remit to any government agencies, and tickets are not issued. The market men and women who suffer from this are mostly those who do not have enough money to rent a shop or have abandoned their shops inside the market.
They are the ones hawking or selling by the road sides in the market. In fact, commercial drivers and market men and women see these touts like government or mini gods.
In 2008, Senator Effiong Dickson Bob sponsored a bill for an act to prohibit touting in public and to establish the national committee against touting in the federal Republic of Nigeria and for other related matters.
But the activities of touts have continued to thrive and have become very lucrative due to the amount of money they make every day and the kind of power they control, so many drivers have abandoned driving to ‘agberoism’.
It is a breeding ground for hoodlums, drop out, thieves, cultists, and lazy youths in the society to oppressed and discourage hard working individuals.
It is becoming part of a known profession that has come to stay in this country. Different governments have come to power with the promise of changing this practice.
Instead they have empowered touts and agberos by giving them monetary target that they are to remit daily or monthly.
So the government has continued to use them not only to collect revenue but also as political thugs. Some have become permanent staff of governments.
They pay themselves before remitting the balance from the surplus to the government. Should we just allow agberos to continue to control and mess up a part of the informal sector where large revenue is coming from but which cannot be fully accounted for?
Nigeria’s informal sector accounts for as much as an estimated 57.9% of the nation’s rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Business day online, June 25th, 2014). The informal sector refers to economic activities in all sectors of the economy that are operated outside the purview of government regulation.
The informal sector is the key promoter of socio-economic development. Over 90% of the work force in Nigeria operates in the informal sector. It is the key driver of the economy and the sector is growing every day due to the high rate of unemployment in the country.
Government needs to formalize this sector by restructuring it and ensuring implementation of the Act of prohibition of touting in public places is passed into law.
Educated individuals (senior school leaving certificate holders or graduates) should be recruited to collect these taxes in a civilized way with proper documentation.
In addition, the books must be made available for auditing after every six months by an external body in order to get the actual amount of money generated from this sector and what it is used for.
To get the full benefit of this plan, these touts should be trained on skilled jobs by the government.
They can also be supported with required equipment for their training to start on their own. And for the SEEFOR (state employment and expenditure for result and project) states, they should be incorporated into the system for training so that they can also work or trade and pay taxes which can be plowed back into the system.
If attention is given to complete eradication of touts popularly called agberos or area boys by Nigerians, then the operators of the informal sector will be encouraged to continue to operate without fear of being molested by touts.
Our GDP will increase and more people will come into the sector, thereby reducing the rate of unemployment and promoting economic growth in the country.
The Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) as a non- governmental organization is of the view that development of any country is better achieved when every aspect of the economy is well structured and proper documentations are made.
It is time to formalize the inter-state transportation network and market sector into a school-like system where the actual number of operators is known, the type of business done and also the money collected as taxes properly documented and spent on capital projects that will facilitate the growth of the informal sector in particular and the society at large.
Sandra Eguagie is a Program Officer with the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) Sandra@aneej.org
