The Governor of Kogi state, Yahaya Bello, has expressed displeasure with news that his administration has imposed a tax on bread to be paid by bakeries and bread sellers in the state.
The Deputy Governor of the state Chief Edward Onoja, made this known in a statement.
He said, “We have just seen a purported consultancy agreement between one of our ministries and a private firm to impose an ill-conceived levy on bread in the state.
For the records, neither the Governor nor the state executive council has imagined or proposed such a devilish tax regime, how much less imposing same on any food or essential commodity, not to mention bread which is a table staple and the basic lifeline of many a household’, the statement read. It insisted that such a claim was ‘…in fact, an embarrassment to the state government.”
The Deputy Governor revealed that the governor directed him to debunk the news to underscore how serious government considered the disinformation.
“I am directed by His Excellency to give the lie to news of an alleged tax imposed on each loaf of bread to be sold in Kogi State. There is no iota of truth in the claims that we have approved such wickedness, because we have not and cannot,” he said.
Onoja said he was himself shocked when news of the strange measure started making the rounds on media platforms, saying that it ran contrary to the widely advertised posture of the state government that the people of Kogi state must not be subjected to any act or policy that will increase their pains in this Covid-19 season.
He highlighted Governor Bello’s responses to issues impacting the welfare of his people during the pandemic as proof that such a tax runs counter to everything the administration stands for.
‘It is well-documented in the media that Governor Yahaya Bello has fought powerful forces, more than any other governor perhaps, to keep his people safe. As CoviD-19 ravaged the country and the world he has mobilised them for lifestyle changes that defeated the virus in the state. He spared them lockdowns and the inherent disruptions to their lives and livelihoods characteristic of covid responses in other places.
He scrupulously obeyed WHO and NCDC guidelines to provide testing to high risk individuals. He relied on pioneering use of Rapid Test Kits for the coronavirus long before they became mainstream. He responded swiftly with contact tracing and quarantines on all suspected cases’.
Chief Onoja noted in his statement that though widely excoriated in those early days Governor Yahaya Bello remained undaunted because of his desire to protect his people at all costs.
According to him, “…today, the result of my Governor’s novel approach to the novel coronavirus are evident for all to see on every daily update given by the federal authorities. ‘Kogi State sits at the bottom of that list, and even those 5 cases allocated to us are controversial at best. To put it mildly, we have had no confirmed case of Covid-19 in Kogi state.”