VAT War: Remove The VAT On Your Alcohol And Get Drunk To Stupor With Cheap Alcohol
By Cham Faliya Sharon
I have a feeling that the word stupid is derived from the word stupor, which literally means being dull to intellect or intelligence, or being numb and dumb and dull to one’s self-awareness. But then, we are talking about VAT. Therefore, let’s talk about VAT, and then we’ll get to numb and dumb and dull and whatever.
The North’s chief occupation is agriculture, and governments don’t charge VAT on agricultural products so that they can be not too expensive for you. That you have more VAT than the North doesn’t make you more productive than them. Actually, there has never ever been any evidence that you are more productive than them in either entrepreneurship or agriculture or in any worthwhile venture. That’s why a little strike by onion farmers or sweet pepper farmers or tomato farmers always puts you in a chokehold of hunger and lamentation.
The breweries and soft drink plants, including other factories in your areas, that produce high VAT revenues use these same agricultural materials from the North that have not been VATed. In other words, if VAT were to be charged on them ab initio, the North will record huge VAT revenues solely from agriculture without mentioning other ventures. Therefore, it is absolutely absurd to gloat on purported high VAT revenues without considering all the factors involved in generating the VAT. And if you mock some northern states for receiving VAT earned from breweries while still banning the sales and consumption of alcohol in their states, then from where did you get the corn, sorghum, and sugarcane products you used in brewing it?
If this VAT war is to continue as it were, with excessively garrulous pomposity and arrogance oozing out from those who seemingly know nothing about the basic elements of economics and production but yet derive pleasure in ascribing parasitism to those who truly earn the rights of being labelled as the most productive people in land use and entrepreneurship in Nigeria, then let VAT be charged on all agricultural products, including the corn, sorghum, wheat, barley, and sugarcane that are used as the primary ingredients for brewing alcohol.
Of course, food prices will go up in addition to their current astronomical rise due to the unwholesome embrace of IMF diktats by the IMF surrogates in power, but the accruing VAT earnings will help raise the VAT profile of Northern states that are usually being ridiculed as parasites by beetleheads, and the farmers there in the North will also get huge (deserved) bumps in their financial earnings due to enhanced valuation of the prices of their farm produce, including cattle, sheep, goats, and other livestock.
And if by charging VAT on agricultural products the prices of alcohol brands end up getting affected by becoming expensive, then the people in the states where breweries are located can beg the federal government to remove VAT on alcohol at their own end so that alcohol can become cheap, and so that they can be drinking themselves to stupor with cheap alcohol. In fact, by removing VAT from alcohol it will even help them to stop mocking northern states whom they accuse of “receiving VAT from alcohol” sales while subscribing themselves to religious conservatism. That way, we can all be spared the annual hypocritical noises of mockery from people who are confused about what they own and what they don’t own, or what they believe in and what they don’t believe in.
When you don’t know what you actually own and what you actually believe in, the quest for morality will either elude you or appear elusive to you, and that’s the point at which you begin to mock those who are making genuine efforts towards attaining genuine morality because pride in alcohol has made you numb and dumb and dull to the realities of your own backyard.
