The President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has been granted tax waivers by the Federal Government in exchange for repairing the Obajana-Kabba road. The Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, revealed this while addressing journalists after yesterday’s Federal Executive Council meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Fashola was convoyed by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN.

According to Fashola, Dangote would build the Federal Government road using cement. He pointed out that the arrangement was not only for Dangote, but for any company and organisation willing to make pre-approved investment in state-owned infrastructure.

He said, “We presented a memo to council for consideration. The memo seeks to take benefits of the existing policy and regulation. It seeks to take benefits of tax policies, tax laws for the purpose of using them to drive infrastructure development renewal.

“So we presented a proposal by one of the subsidiary of Dangote Group, a construction company, for the construction of a section of Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba-Ilorin, specifically the section between Obajana-Kabba Road using cement as demonstrative of how, perhaps, we should continue to build going forward in order to reduce maintenance on the road and the company proposing to fund the construction of that section of the road in exchange for some tax remittances.”

He noted that companies were ordinarily supposed to pay income tax, but that there are existing policies in the country’s laws which enable government to consider and give tax incentives.

“So Council considered and approved the proposal for Dangote Construction Company to build that section of the road because the tonnage of cement being produced from the factory has increased and the traffic in that area has increased; there has been unfortunate accidents also.

“So it is a total economic policy which Council considered and approved because it gives support to industry. It enables us to take benefit of our tax law to renew infrastructure at a time where we are really challenged for resources to finance all our routes.”

He also said that it enables the government to save lives by quickly and urgently rebuilding that road so that other commuters who also depend on that road for their livelihood would benefit from the road.

“It is important to stress that this is not a Dangote-only issue; it is an existing tax policy that a corporate body or individual that makes investment in the infrastructure of a public nature should be entitled to make claims for remission on its income tax obligation.”

He further explained that even individuals are entitled to make this claim if the infrastructure goes through this type of process and is approved by the government.

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