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Fact-Check 82 | The Burden That Never Lifted
A Declaration Without Consequence
On 14 March 2024, Governor Hope Uzodinma stood before a room of business leaders and announced that his administration had “completely eradicated multiple taxation in Imo State.” The applause was immediate. The optics were flawless. The claim, however, expired on contact with reality.
Across Imo’s 27 local government areas, tax receipts continued to circulate uninterrupted. Markets did not pause. Enforcement agents did not retreat. No levy disappeared. What ended was not multiple taxation, but the government’s obligation to explain it.
What the Numbers Say—Unprompted
According to the Federal Inland Revenue Service Subnational Review (2024), Imo State operates 39 identifiable levies, of which 22 directly overlap across state and local government authorities. That yields a duplication rate of 56 percent.
By comparison:
Anambra records 36 percent duplication.
Enugu, 30 percent.
Ebonyi, 24 percent.
The South-East regional average stands at approximately 26 percent. Imo’s rate is therefore more than double that benchmark.
The governor said zero. The data responded fifty-six.
Receipts as Instruments of Control
In Douglas Road, Nekede Market, Relief Junction, and Mbaise, traders recount an identical routine: one shop, three levies—environmental, sanitation, and “security maintenance.” Each arrives with a different receipt. Each claims legal backing. None offers clarity.
An audit by Transparency International Nigeria (2024) found that informal and semi-formal collections in Imo rose by 37 percent between 2023 and 2024. For the average micro-trader, annual payments increased from roughly ₦135,000 to ₦185,000—an additional ₦50,000 extracted without any corresponding service.
Applied across approximately 215,000 registered informal traders, that increase diverts ₦10.75 billion annually from commerce into administrative opacity. It is not revenue reform. It is a transfer of fragility.
The Cost of Duplication
Small and medium-sized enterprises have fared no better. Data compiled by BudgIT (2025) shows that average SME tax exposure rose from ₦145,000 in 2023 to ₦186,000 in 2024—a 29 percent increase within a single fiscal cycle.
During the same period, roughly 2,000 SMEs shut down in the state. The direct tax-linked loss alone—₦41,000 per enterprise—amounts to ₦82 million in one year. Projected over a four-year administrative cycle, the figure approaches ₦330 million, excluding secondary losses in employment, supply chains, and local demand.
In human terms, this translates to nearly 10,000 jobs erased, not by market forces, but by administrative excess.
When Enforcement Becomes Proliferation
The Nigeria Governors’ Forum Fiscal Index (2024) identifies Imo as the only South-East state where unregulated revenue agents outnumber licensed ones. Field data from fifteen local governments reveals a consistent pattern:
In Owerri Municipal, 7 registered agents operate alongside 14 unregistered ones—a 200 percent excess.
In Orlu, the excess reaches 183 percent.
In Ngor Okpala, 167 percent.
Where enforcement multiplies unchecked, legality becomes performative. Authority fragments. Compliance mutates into coercion.
Read also: Falsehood No. 81 — “We Ended All Kidnappings In Imo”
The Fiction of Harmonization
Despite official claims, the Imo Internal Revenue Service continues to issue parallel receipts bearing identical serial numbers. Interviews with mid-level officials confirm that “harmonised collection” exists largely in presentation materials prepared for donors and development partners.
In practice, collections are split—one portion remitted to state accounts, another to local governments, and a residual portion retained informally in the field. The system is not broken; it is calibrated. Revenue administration has become a distributive network.
Economic Geometry, Not Rhetoric
BudgIT’s comparative analysis shows that Imo-based enterprises lose an average of ₦62,000 more per annum to redundant levies than their regional counterparts. Multiplied across an estimated 100,000 active small enterprises, this equates to ₦6.2 billion in annual capital erosion.
Macroeconomically, that loss suppresses Imo’s GDP growth by approximately 0.5 percentage points per year—a margin sufficient to finance multiple teaching hospitals or hundreds of kilometres of rural road rehabilitation.
Instead, the funds sustain a parallel economy of collectors, intermediaries, and political enablers.
Compliance by Intimidation
The Owerri Chamber of Commerce, speaking on record, acknowledged that formal complaints have all but ceased. The reason is not resolution, but risk. Challenging an agent often triggers retaliatory closure orders. Fear has replaced procedure. Silence has become the cost of survival.
Branding Versus Balance Sheets
Government messaging continues to promote a “tax-friendly Imo.” Billboards echo prosperity slogans. Yet the African Development Bank (2024) classifies the state as “regulatory inconsistent and administratively predatory.” Investor behaviour reflects this assessment: capital migration to neighbouring states has increased by 18 percent since the announcement of the so-called reform.
The arithmetic is unambiguous:
Reform proclaimed = 100 percent.
Reform implemented = 44 percent.
Duplication retained = 56 percent.
Verdict — The Burden That Never Lifted
Governor Uzodinma’s assertion that multiple taxation has been eliminated in Imo State collapses under empirical examination. The claim is not merely unsupported; it is actively contradicted by the evidence generated daily within the state’s own fiscal machinery. Receipts continue to circulate in multiples. Levies overlap without apology. Independent datasets do not merely question the reform—they negate it.
What has occurred is not the dismantling of a predatory tax architecture, but its cosmetic reconfiguration. The mechanisms remain intact; only the language has softened. In practice, taxation in Imo functions less as a transparent system of public finance and more as a negotiated terrain where compliance is enforced through uncertainty and intimidation.
True reform liberates enterprise by replacing discretion with clarity and fear with predictability. Until that shift occurs, proclamations of success will remain performative—statements delivered ahead of evidence, and sustained only by repetition rather than proof.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
Selected Sources
African Development Bank. (2024). Nigeria Business Climate and Regulatory Efficiency Report 2024. Abidjan: AfDB Private Sector Development Department.
BudgIT Foundation. (2025). State of States Report 2025 – Ease of Doing Business and SME Tax Compliance (Imo Chapter). Lagos: BudgIT Foundation.
Central Bank of Nigeria. (2024). MSME Credit and Tax Constraint Assessment Report 2024. Abuja: CBN Development Finance Department.
Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria. (2024). Subnational Ease of Starting Business Index 2024. Abuja: CAC Research and Policy Division.
Federal Inland Revenue Service. (2024). Subnational Tax Harmonisation Framework Evaluation Report 2024. Abuja: FIRS Strategy and Planning Department.
Imo Broadcasting Corporation (IBC TV). (2024, March 14). Governor Uzodinma Declares: “We Have Ended Multiple Taxation in Imo.” Owerri: IBC Archives.
Imo State Government. (2024, March 15). Press Release: Governor’s Address at Imo Business Community Roundtable – Creating a Tax-Friendly Environment. Owerri: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Imo State Internal Revenue Service. (2024). Annual Tax Administration Report 2024. Owerri: IMIRS Publications.
Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME). (2024). SME Fiscal Pressure Survey 2024. Lagos: NASME Policy Unit.
Nigeria Governors’ Forum. (2024). Subnational Economic Competitiveness Scorecard 2024. Abuja: NGF Secretariat.
Transparency International Nigeria. (2024). Subnational Fiscal Integrity and Revenue Transparency Index 2024. Abuja: TI-Nigeria Secretariat.
World Bank. (2024). Nigeria Development Update – Private Sector Competitiveness and Tax Reform. Washington, DC: World Bank Nigeria Country Office.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
