An expert in Public Finance, Mr Abikure Tega has advised The Federal Government to adopt the Blockchain Technology as a way of tackling fraud in the nation’s tax regime as well as the electoral system. Tega who is the Chief Executive of Kurecion Foundation, gave the advice Sunday in Abuja at a training for select members of the public on the new technology and how they could tap into its facilities.
“It is completely transparent and cannot be changed, it can be used to create a decentralised system of payment where the tax payer has an unhindered access to the collector which is the Government. It enhances revenue collection and removes the challenges of remittances, everything becomes easy when it is brought to the blockchain infrastructure,” he said. According to him, the technology addresses complexities in governance and administrative systems, as it is essentially a decentralised transaction ledger in which digital information can be distributed and viewed but not copied or altered.
On elections, he said; “from anywhere you are across the country, and the world, if the system shows that you are a Nigerian through imputing certain data, you can vote. With the technology, wherever you are, you do not need to go to a polling unit, the moment you put in your vote, everybody can see that you have voted and once your vote is put in, it cannot be hacked by any means. “Instead of Government setting up committees to curb election malpractices, the simple thing to do, is to take election to blockchain”, Tega said.
He added that as a distributed database, it lives across a network of computers which makes it exceptionally secure. He added that it was unfortunate that though Nigeria had the lowest Gross Domestic Product GDP ratio between tax collection and its GDP across the world, not everything that was collected was usually remitted to Government.
Tega noted that the blockchain technology had already been tested in some African countries, adding that it was no longer a mystery but already within the country, stressing that all that is needed, is Government´s political will to embrace it. “We are saying that this technology is already here with us, and we can deploy it for our own advantage, so I am calling on the Government to see the possibilities and to have an open mind to innovation technology”.
Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/06/expert-advocates-blockchain-technology-curb-fraud-tax-electoral-systems/
