Lagos stands a chance of making more money from the recent ruling of the Appeal Court that the State House of Assembly has the powers to make laws regulating inland waterways within Lagos.
Lagos tops other states in IGR, earning about N24 billion monthly with the current administration still pushing to net N30 billion by 2018 and N50 billion by 2019 with proper harnessing of its resources and widening of the tax net.
Adeniji Kazeem, attorney general and commissioner for justice, in Lagos, says the implication of the Appeal Court ruling which ‘favours Lagos’ as against National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), is that all encumbrances that stood in the way of the state government with regard to regulating activities on the waterways have been cleared.
Already, the state government has issued a 7-day ultimatum to boat operators, dredgers and all stakeholders in the sector to fully comply with all the applicable laws, rules and guidelines concerning their operations or appropriate sanctions would apply. Complying with the laws also means that relevant taxes and levies are to be paid to the state government, which has also announced its determination to sanitise the sector.
The attorney general, together with Steve Ayorinde, commissioner for information and strategy; Ade Akinsanya, commissioner for waterfront infrastructure development; Abisola Kamsom, managing director, Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) said there have been attempts by those who lost out, especially NIWA to whittle down the effect of the appellate court judgment. They said the state government would fiercely protect the God-given resources within the state and never relent in championing the cause of true federalism in the country.”
Kazeem said the quest by the federal agency to keep on controlling the resources of the state from Abuja despite the judgment was totally absurd and cannot stand when viewed from moral, legal and economic grounds.
“You can imagine that a federal government agency in Abuja intends to control how boat operators operate here. This is just the same thing as saying that the federal government agency should control the buses that ply your road. If you say you have a right to control land transportation, should you not have right to control water transportation.
Secondly, if you have a coastline that is very important to you and then some people are eroding that coastline by unregulated dredging cutting into the coastline, causing flooding, causing environmental nuisance and then you say that an agency that is situate in Abuja should control that, that is absurd. So, on a moral, on a legal, on an economic standpoint, it is not right,” Kazeem said.
Kamson on her part urged all stakeholders to take full advantage of the 7-day ultimatum to regularise their operations and activities, adding that the government was reforming the public transportation space with the aim to achieve intermodal system with waterway as an integral part.
JOSHUA BASSEY
