CODE OF CONDUCT FOR PUBLIC OFFICERS

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR PUBLIC OFFICERS

Part 1, of The fifth schedule in the Nigerian Constitution provides for the code of conduct of public officers, though many public officers in Nigeria have flagrantly disregarded these provisions, the common Nigerian doesn’t know when the law has been flouted by these unscrupulous public officers.

The aim of this article, is to shine light on the high standards by which our public officers must live and to allow you be the judge in determining whether our leaders/public officers are indeed leading by example, especially
in view of the recent allegations by American billionaire Richard Branson that Virgin abandoned its business in Nigeria because of the brood of Nigerian politicians/public officers who daily sought to exploit the business man.

The Code of conduct for public officers, provides that a public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts with his duties and responsibilities, neither shall The President, Vice-President, Governor, Deputy- Governor, Ministers of the Federal Govt., Commissioners of the States, members of the National Assembly and House of Assembly of States maintain or operate any bank account in any country outside Nigeria.

Furthermore, it provides that a public officer shall not ask for or accept property or benefits of any kind for himself or for any other person on account of anything done or omitted to be done by him in discharge of his duties. It further provides that any public officer who receives gifts from commercial firms, business enterprises or persons, who have contracts with the government, shall be presumed to have been received in contravention of this law except the contrary is proved.

The law states that no person shall offer a public officer any property, gift or benefit of any kind as an inducement or bribe for the granting of any favour or the discharge in his favour of the public officer’s duties. A public officer must not abuse his office neither shall he belong to any society which is incompatible with the functions or dignity of his office.

A public officer shall at the end of four years and at the end of his term in office submit to the code of conduct bureau a written declaration of all his properties, assets, and liabilities of those of his unmarried children under the age of 18 years.

These provisions of the law have been spit on times without number by public officers in Nigeria, however now that we have more information at our finger tips we may as well hold these public officers to ransom and insist that they uphold the law as they swore to do.

@adedunmade

PUPILLAGE (PART 3)

Success Without Pupillage And Failure In Spite Of It
27. Young lawyers who succeed without pupillage and those who fail in spite of it do so for the same reasons: the will to succeed or the lack of it. Those who have such will and also undergo pupillage become much more successful. Those who lack it will be unable to take advantage of the benefits of pupillage and when they eventually become independent, the signs of a successful pupillage will be lacking.

28. Strictly speaking, the pupillage that I envisage is not just apprenticeship but also discipleship. That is why I have recommended that the law firms that will be qualified to engage pupil-counsel must be selected by the Nigerian Bar Association. It cannot be open to all. Similarly, the process of pupillage cannot also be open to all
lawyers called to Bar. There are many lawyers today who although called to Bar, do not intend to practise law. It is the aptitude test that will weed away such lawyers and help them concentrate on what they really want to do notwithstanding their law degree.

29. I am not a Darwinian but I believe that the time has come if we are to enhance the capacity of the young lawyer in Nigeria not just to do it by pupillage as I have defined it but also to insist on the survival of the fittest. This is what a very wise Nigerian lawyer had to say about the qualification for becoming a Judge of the High Court in Nigeria:

“If we had our way, we would insist that no one without a good knowledge of Mathematics, or Logic and Methodology, and Psychology, in addition to his professional qualifications, should be elevated to the Bench. The rigorous mental drill which these disciplines enforce; the tidiness of mind and precision in thought and presentation which the study of Mathematics, Logic and Methodology inculcates; the dependable tools for the investigation, analysis and interpretation of facts which Logic and Methodology provide; and the breadth of outlook and a deep comprehension of ‘the complex of human passion’ which psychology imparts – all these, among other things are sine qua non of any healthy trial or adjudication of disputes.”

30. There is no doubt that we all as lawyers believe and admit that if our Judges must have these qualities, so also must our lawyers possess them. Every lawyer requires the tidiness of mind, precision in thought and presentation and a deep comprehension of the complex of human passion. These are not the requirements that a dropout can possess but it is the tragic reality of today’s legal profession that the study of Law is gradually becoming the escape route for the Mathematics and Science dropouts.

31. I make bold to say that the legal profession cannot be the safe haven for those rejected in other professions as it is increasingly becoming now. Candidates who find Mathematics difficult to understand or detest the Sciences simply think that the study of Law is the next best alternative. Our wise leaders think otherwise. A few examples will suffice. The revered Justice Andrews Obaseki, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and an eminent jurist first successfully completed a degree course in Agriculture before becoming a lawyer. Another eminent jurist, C. A. Oputa also a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, also successfully completed a first degree in Biology before reading Law. Aguda and F.R.A. Williams, established names in the legal profession, excelled in the Sciences but opted to read Law.

32. I do not intend to raise another debate as to whether it is necessary to make a first degree compulsory for admission into the Law Faculty. However, I believe the time has come for us to insist on an aptitude test for all those who intend to enter into pupillage and to open appointments as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, a Judge of the High Court or a Bencher to only those who have undergone such pupillage and have shown aptitude as recommended by that wise lawyer. If we are to enhance capacity building, there must first exist the capability for capacity building.

33. It appears we are unable to control entry requirements for admission into the law faculties in Nigeria which has now been reduced to a ridiculously low level. Law is now offered in more than twenty universities in Nigeria including a university specialising in Science and Technology. If we have no control over the entry requirement into the law faculty, we can have control over the entry requirement into the profession proper.

34. That is why pupillage offers the best if not the only opportunity for this to be done. Continuing legal education, mentoring, licensing and other methods of enhancing capacity building being presently developed by the NBA are ineffective without pupillage. It is necessary to first set in order the beginning of the young lawyer’s career before determining how the career can be shaped. When one embarks on a journey and he faces the wrong direction, he will never arrive at his destination no matter how efficient the conduct of the journey may be.

The Structure of Pupillage
35. It is necessary for me to outline the essential ingredients of the pupillage that I envisage for enhancing capacity building in the young lawyer. The first and most important is that such young lawyer must be focused on making a career in Law. Whatever might have been the reason for studying Law, he must now become single-minded and determined to pursue a career of Law and no more. Every literature read, hobby pursued, thought generated and association made must have as its main focus the goal of making that young lawyer an excellent one.

36. One of the problems that the young lawyer faces in Nigeria is the huge demand from those who expect a quick return immediately after graduation. They may be either parents or dependants who believe that the huge investment on the education of the young lawyer must yield instant reward. This is aside from the personal needs of the young lawyer particularly for basic amenities like a good accommodation, a car and a reasonable disposable amount in the bank account to guarantee comfortable standard of living.

37. That is why I have recommended that the apprenticeship in pupillage must be a PAID one. How do we determine a reasonable pay? The standard “entry salary” in many developed jurisdictions today is about $2000. In Nigeria, I recommend a starting salary of about N100,000 per month for a young lawyer based in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri and Abuja which are presently the four most expensive cities. In all other jurisdictions, it should not be less than N60,000. I have not come to these figures arbitrarily.

38. I believe that a young lawyer just graduating from the Law School now falls in the bracket of 22 – 25 years. A salary of N100,000 gives a total of N1.2 million out of which a decent flat of N400,000 per annum and living expenses of another N400,000 leaves him with N400,000 to invest in personal assets like furnishings and car.

39. I strongly support that we take care of our parents and dependants but as the saying goes in the airplane, if there is a sudden loss of pressure in the cabin, you must first wear your own oxygen mask before helping others. I am of the opinion that a very bright junior can double this pay in the first two or three years. However, if the young lawyer’s expenses are more than these, he can only have himself to blame.

40. The next requirement is the desire for continuing education both in law and also in other areas particularly the Arts and Humanities. This comes out of self-motivation and initiative. A young lawyer who lacks initiative and self-motivation has already made pupillage very difficult. These are innate qualities that have to be possessed by those who want to make the Law a career. When a young lawyer is armed with these qualities, he will be result-oriented and will have the ability to continue to develop himself until he becomes an excellent lawyer. That is why no lawyer in pupillage must see himself as an employee.

41. The desire of the employee is only for the bottom line and not for self-development. Many young lawyers have had what would have been an otherwise excellent career truncated by constant job changes in the search for increase in wages. In an apprenticeship, the aim is not wages but competence with the assurance that as competence increases, the capacity for increase in wages is enhanced. One of the things that I look for in employing young lawyers is career stability. It is very likely that a lawyer who has changed jobs four times in three years would eventually have a stultified legal career.

42. The next requirement for a successful pupillage is rainmaking. The young lawyer must immediately understand that it is the clients’ fees that sustains and improves a law firm. Every lawyer thrives on the ability to deliver qualitative service and charge appropriately for it. The young lawyer must understand that the best form of marketing is referrals from satisfied clients. Therefore, every single brief must be handled as the source of another brief.

43. The young lawyer must demonstrate professional competence doing all that is necessary to protect his client’s interest without compromising on professional integrity. The way to achieve this is to put one’s self in the position of the client without necessarily becoming the client. The requirement of an independent and dispassionate view must be kept at all times. There must be no undercharging or overcharging the client.

44. All these techniques are learnt from choosing the right pupil master. The young lawyer must have his own focus of how he intends to build his practice. He would now carefully search for a principal that has these qualities that he wants to emulate. That is why it is necessary to be a member of a local Bar where one can get details of such firms and then determine where to go.

45. The last requirement is cultivating the legal language. Language is an essential tool for reasoning. Poor language begets poor reasoning. It is important that the young lawyer cultivates appropriate legal language as this is the only way that his professional competence will be outwardly measured. When the young lawyer begins to master legal language, he develops an ability to communicate with the client and simplify complex procedures. Competence is best determined by an ability to simplify what would have otherwise been a puzzle.

46. It must be the aim of every young lawyer to continue developing his understanding of English Language which still remains the language of legal practice in Nigeria. Aside from this, the young lawyer must develop skills in critical thinking in order to sharpen his mind and become more analytical in his reasoning. As language enhances reasoning, so also does reasoning help language. Both are interdependent.

Conclusion
47. To sum up, I believe that the time has come for us to separate the wheat from the chaff in the legal profession. This is by looking for ways and means of confining legal practice to those who have the drive and zeal for it. Those who lack such zeal will still be legal practitioners but not lawyers in practice. I recommend pupillage as I have tried to define and explain it in this paper as the best way to achieve it.

48. There are many points of controversy in the legal profession today. Are we over-producing lawyers? And is the declining quality the result of such over-production? Should we fix the maximum number of lawyers that can be called to Bar in any year as South Korea has done? Should the possession of a first degree be an entry requirement into the law faculty? Should the establishment of an independent legal practice immediately upon being called to Bar be prohibited? Should the entry requirements for admission into the law faculty, even if it will not be a first degree be improved upon by insisting on credits in Mathematics and a Science subject? These and more are the current debates going on.

49. I do not think we should tie ourselves down to all these. A properly structured and well-organised pupillage is likely to solve all these problems. It will sift away those who should not have gone to the law school. It will help give focus to those who are left. The only urgent question is how we can secure the future of the legal profession with those who have already qualified. When those who have already qualified are properly sifted, those who are aspiring to be lawyers will take the hint.

50. I have deliberately avoided the thorny issue of the declining quality of our young lawyer upon graduating from the university which some believe is attributable to examination malpractices in our secondary schools and universities. It is the popular view that as a result of the erosion of academic strata between the lecturer and the student which has led to undue familiarity, the gradings in these educational institutions are now suspect. This controversy need not be examined too seriously having regard to the solution that I am proffering. Since it is beyond debate that the entry requirements into our law faculties have become abysmally unacceptable, it is to be expected that unscrupulous students and lecturers may compound the bad situation by colluding to fabricate false grades and results. The NBA has very little control over JAMB and the university. However, we can determine what happens after the law school. Pupillage is a veritable tool in exposing examination cheats and fraudulent results. It is the weapon that we should constantly sharpen in our determined desire to sift the lilies from the thorns. That is why I recommend pupillage as the plank of enhancing capacity building in the young lawyer. If well developed and coordinated, it will signal the return to the acceptable standards set by the founding fathers of the Nigerian legal profession. We must ensure that the labours of our heroes past must not be in vain.

Thank you.

PUPILLAGE: (PART 2)

What is Pupillage?
15. I use the term ‘pupillage’ rather loosely to refer to the period of a lawyer’s career in Nigeria, which is expected to be spent learning the ropes or cutting one’s teeth under the supervision of a pupil-master. This period need not be compelled by law but ought to be structured by the Nigerian Bar Association and made attractive for the young lawyer to voluntarily enrol in. I do not have in mind the type of apprenticeship programme practised in the United Kingdom which is made compulsory for the furtherance of one’s practice career. I do not also have in mind a period of compulsory work employment before one begins an independent legal practise.

16. The type of pupillage that I am recommending is a period of paid apprenticeship during which the pupil counsel learns what was not and cannot be taught at the law faculty
and the law school. Before entering into such apprenticeship, the pupil counsel is made to sit for a qualifying aptitude test in a law firm designated by the Nigerian Bar Association as appropriate for pupillage. After being successful, the pupil counsel then enters into an apprenticeship agreement for a period voluntarily stated by such pupil but of a period not less than thirty-six months.

17. During this period of thirty six months, the pupil counsel undergoes practical training in the history of the legal profession in Nigeria, sourcing and billing clients, courtroom strategies, alternative dispute resolution, understanding the Judge and the client, legal drafting, legal language, ethics and etiquettes and information technology.

18. It is obvious that within the period of four, five or even six years spent in our training institutions, not every aspect of law and practice can be covered or even mastered. Many lawyers can easily recall that they never learnt in the university the branch of law in which they are now specialists. Up till today, there are few, if any, Faculties of Law in Nigeria that offer Chieftaincy Law, Anti-Corruption Law, Project Financing or documentary credits, Agricultural Law and Advertising Law. These are branches of Law that constitute an enormous part of the practice areas in many jurisdictions in Nigeria.

19. It is during pupillage that a pupil-counsel understands billing, client interviews, counsel-court relationship, courtroom strategies, rainmaking and many other important aspects of law in which only practice can make perfect. This is the period that I refer to as “pupillage”. It is the period when a legal career is shaped by the eminence of the pupil-master, the contacts built, the practical experience acquired, the culture and etiquette imbibed.

Is Pupillage Necessary?
20. There is no doubt that this will be a contentious debate. However, as I have said, the type of pupillage that I envisage and now advocate is not yet entrenched in Nigeria. If we look at pupillage, in the way that is very common in this country, in which a newly qualified lawyer wanting to “gain experience” moves into a law firm or joins a “sole proprietorship practice” without counsel or guidance hoping to spend some few years and then setting up his independent practice, then it is very doubtful whether such “pupillage” is necessary.

21. There are very many successful senior lawyers in Nigeria today who underwent practically no pupillage, as we presently know it in Nigeria. My principal’s pupillage was for only three months! Furthermore, we can also point to several lawyers who served “pupillage” for a very long period, some for upward of ten years but are now buried in obscurity. I myself do not advocate that type of pupillage. Even if that type had been useful in the past, or the avoidance of it has not made a difference, the days of unplanned beginning in the legal profession are long gone.

22. Nigerian lawyers today are like the sand at the sea shore or the stars in the sky. It is time to structure the early years and give hope of a brighter future by an excellent beginning. In 2003, there were about 41,000 lawyers in Nigeria, dead and alive. As at now, July 2012, there are more than 80,000. What that means is that growing at an average of 8,000 lawyers annually, the present number will nearly double in another ten years. If we ignore pupillage of the type I now advocate which would be indigenous to Nigeria, we leave our young lawyers in free ranging practice and as sheep without a shepherd.

23. The repercussion of this will be that many will go into independent legal practice without counsel or leadership and create a mushroom of stunted firms which are incapable of sustaining themselves or expanding to admit other young lawyers. It will be interesting to take the statistics of law firms set up five years ago by lawyers immediately upon being called and the number of those that are surviving today. I do not think that we will be delighted by our discovery.

24. It is my firm and solemn submission that a law firm set up by a young lawyer immediately after call is doomed to either fail or become a plague on the client world. Clients’ cases and consequently their lives will become a guinea-pig in the hands of untrained minds. Learning will be haphazard, and billing, arbitrary. Many of such firms will be on subsistence level for a very long period, unable to recruit juniors or even pay them well, if recruited.

25. They become pawns in the hands of unscrupulous clients and victims of serial breaches of professional ethics. What is the palm tree to a tomato plant? A desperate effort to burst out into legal practice without pupillage is like the airline trainee pilot upon graduation, seizing a 747 jumbo jet for a trans-Atlantic flight with 300 souls on board. Is it possible to imagine an NYSC medical doctor conducting a caesarean operation? Or a civil engineer upon graduation designing structural drawings for a ten-storey block of flats?

26. The pupillage is the incubation that the young lawyer needs to enhance capacity. The queries raised however cannot be wished away. It is still necessary to inquire into why lawyers who did not undergo pupillage succeed and even those who did faded away into oblivion.

PUPILLAGE (PART 1)

Paper delivered on Tuesday 24th July, 2012 at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Ikeja Branch Young Lawyers’ Forum Seminar

By:

O. A. R. Ogunde Esq.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Attorney-General, Ogun State
Principal Counsel, Wemimo Ogunde & Co (on leave of absence)
(Former Chairman, NBA Ikeja Branch Young Lawyers’ Empowerment Committee)

Introduction
1. A lawyer, upon being called to Bar in Nigeria, can immediately begin to practise independently. This has been the case from the time Nigerian citizens became eligible to practise in Nigerian courts. It is therefore common to see many of the eminent lawyers in Nigeria who were called in the 1930s up till the 1960s not to have had any apprenticeship or employment before setting up their law firms.

2. It appears that at that time, attachment to a law firm or apprenticeship was either unnecessary or difficult to achieve. Many of the experienced lawyers in that colonial era were English lawyers who were reluctant to admit or employ Nigerians. Furthermore, the indigenous Nigerian legal system was still in its infancy and so the new wig did not find it too complicated since English common law and statutes were predominant in the legal system of that time and almost all the new wigs were trained in England.

3. It therefore appears that the Nigerian legal history has no record of pupillage, technically speaking. What that also means is that the young lawyer in Nigeria has not had the tradition of regulated apprenticeship whether imposed by law or by custom at the Bar. This position has prevailed till now except for a short interregnum.

4. For a brief period in Nigeria, i.e. between 1978 and 1984, this was not so. A lawyer newly-enrolled was compelled by law to be attached to a law firm for five years to gain practical experience before commencing an independent legal practice. The Regulated and Other Professions (Miscellaneous Provisions) Decree No. 5 of 1978 provides as follows:

“As from the commencement of this decree and subject as hereinafter provided, no citizen of Nigeria shall, after been qualified to practise any scheduled profession under this decree, be entitled to enter into the practice of such profession on his own or to practice in partnership or in any other form of association with any other person until after service by such professional as an employee in a recognized organisation for period of not less than five years after being so qualified as aforementioned.
(Section 1)

A strict interpretation of this section shows that it was not even an attempt at introducing pupillage since what the section compels is employment and not pupillage.

5. This section of the Decree was repealed in 1984 by the Regulated and Other Professions (Private Practise Prohibition Decree) No. 34 of 1984. It is not necessary to go into the controversy generated by these two decrees other than to point out that the attempt to regulate the practice of the young lawyer in Nigeria appeared to be a very short-lived one.

6. Similarly, the attempt to regulate the appearance of the young lawyer at the appellate court was also short lived. When the Court of Appeal was established in 1976, the law establishing that court prohibited any lawyer having less than five years post-call experience from appearing there. This restriction has now been swept away by a strong challenge from a lawyer (incidentally a member of this Branch) who, as a young lawyer in 1981 got the Court of Appeal Ibadan to declare this enactment unconstitutional. Technically speaking, therefore, there is no pupillage requirement in Nigeria.

7. It is important at this stage to understand what is meant in this paper by the term “young lawyer”. Most Bar Associations in the Commonwealth countries and even in the United States of America define “the young lawyer” as a lawyer enrolled to practise having post call experience of seven years or less or is under thirty-six years. The Canadian Bar Association defines a young lawyer as a lawyer who has been at the Bar for ten years or less or is under the age of forty irrespective of the year of call. In Queensland, Australia, the young lawyer is one who has less than five years post-call experience or is aged thirty-six. There appears to be no fixed age both chronologically or for post-call but it is safe to state that it varies from five to ten years post-call experience and thirty-six to forty years in chronological age. It is doubtful whether this definition can fit in into the Nigerian context. Furthermore, in these jurisdictions, the young lawyers’ associations are sometimes separated from the overall Bar associations unlike Nigeria.

8. In Nigeria, a young lawyer is simply defined as one having post-call experience of seven years or less without any restriction as to chronological age. Furthermore, the young lawyers’ association is always a section of the overall Bar association and not distinct and separate from it. For the purpose of this paper, I will leave out the perplexities in the definition of the young lawyer and restrict myself to defining the young lawyer as a legal practitioner having post-call experience of five years or less and who is under thirty years of age. For the purpose of this paper, I do not regard as a young lawyer a retiree who enters the law faculty at sixty and is called to Bar at sixty five or a mature student who simply has an interest in reading Law and enrols at probably forty years and is called to Bar at forty-five. I have left out this category for the obvious reason that for many of them, the pursuit of law as a career is ruled out and the vagaries of the profession encountered by those just graduating from the university in their twenties will not affect them.

The Perils of the Young lawyer
9. It is self-evident that the young lawyer as I have defined it is about the most vulnerable in the legal profession. I have diligently searched through the NBA Constitution and I cannot find any provision in that constitution that gives any special privilege or right or advantage to this class of lawyers. Immediately after being called to Bar, there is no programme that has been outlined for their development or career enhancement. Even a visit to the website of the Young Lawyers’ Association reveals how neglected they are. On my last visit on 22nd July 2012, the most recent events were those of mid 2008 with no resource material for the young lawyer or any information aimed at enhancing capacities.

10. This is not surprising. The Young Lawyers’ Forum was inaugurated less than a decade ago. Compared to other jurisdictions, the young lawyers’ forum in Nigeria is truly young. There are countries that have Young Lawyers’ Associations which are seventy years old or formed almost a century ago. These young lawyers’ associations are well structured and properly organised.

11. There is another form of peril being faced by the young lawyer, although that is not peculiar to Nigeria. This is the peril of global economic recession and decline which has resulted in high unemployment, layoffs and law firm closures even in the otherwise healthy economies. Just recently, precisely February 2012, a group of young lawyers filed law suits against their law schools claiming damages for offering false job prospects. Their claim was based on the fact that their law schools in their prospectus claimed that job prospects for their graduates was at the rate of 88 – 98% but that four years after graduation, they were still to be employed. Although one of the cases has dismissed, (others still pending are likely to be dismissed) the law suit underscores the frustration that the young lawyer now faces even in America. Similarly, there has been an attempt by some lawyers in England to organise an “Occupy the Inns of Court” which was brought by the failure to secure employment.

12. The young lawyer in Nigeria is not immune from the effects of the global economic downturn. It is with sadness that I see an army of young lawyers sometimes up to two hundred struggling for employment where probably only two vacancies exist. The plight of the young lawyer is also seen in the poor dressing and shabby appearance before our courts. Many have out of frustration resorted to establishing law firms immediately upon being called to Bar. Some who have not done so have become estate agents laying themselves exposed to worrying temptations that have signalled the doom of many before them. The number of complaints filed against the young lawyers before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee is increasing at an alarming rate.

13. I am not also aware of any systematic or compulsory programme of mentoring that has been outlined for the young lawyer. It does not even appear that we have an exact number of young lawyers in Nigeria. I will be very much surprised if we even have the exact number of legal practitioners on the roll of the Supreme Court engaged in active practice. This to my mind is a very perilous situation and exposes the future of our profession to grave danger if our young lawyers are unnumbered, unaided and disorganised.

14. It should be obvious to us that with time, our young lawyers lacking identity, organisation and motivation would eventually become disenchanted, unprofessional and incompetent. We must not allow this trend to continue since it is from this group that Magistrates, Judges, advocates and leaders will eventually emerge. What is the way out? As it has been suggested in the theme of this seminar, it is capacity building and to my mind, the plank of that capacity building is pupillage.

NIGERIAN TAX LAWS


Taxation of persons and businesses is a means through which government raises revenue to finance its programmes and meet its obligations to its citizens. Such taxes include property tax. In Nigeria, where property is acquired or transferred, the parties are required under the vaious tax regimes to pay taxes to the government.
Similarly,rent accuring to individuals and companies on properties is regarded as income and accordingly taxed.   Tax is a compulsory charge by the Government on the income of an individual,corporarion, or trust, as well as value of an estate or gift. It could also be described as a levy imposed by an organ of government for public purposes. Taxes are either direct or indirect levies.

Direct taxation occurs where persons are taxed to pay for no particular services or goods delivered, but simply for the maintanance of government. Indirect levies are where persons are charged for services rendered to them, transactions conducted or for other activities.
Taxes by the Federal, State and Local governments can be summarised as follows;   Taxes levied by the Federal Government include;
1. Companies Income Tax.
2. Withholding tax on Companies
3. Petroleum Profits Tax
4. Value Added Tax
5. Education Tax
6. Capital Gains Tax
7. Stamp duties.
8. Personal Income Tax
Taxes collected by  State Governments include;
1.Personal Income Tax
2. Withholding Tax
3. Capital Gains Tax
4. Stamp duties on instruments executed by individuals
5. Road Taxes
6.Pools betting and lotteries and gaming and casinos taxes by individuals
7. Business premises registration fees.
8.Development levies on individuals
9. Taxes for naming of street registration fees in State capitals.
10. Markets
11. Right of Occupancy fees over lands owned by State Governments in urban areas of the State.
Taxes colected by Local Government include taxes in respect of;
1. Shops and Kiosks rates
2. Tenement rates
3. On and off Liquor licence fees
4. Slaughter slab fees
5. Marraige, birth and death registration fees
6. Right of occupancy fees for land in rural areas
7. Market taxes and motor park levies
8. Domestic animal licence fees  
The above mentioned taxes do not cover all the levies imposed by Government. If you have any legal questions regarding your tax regimes, kindly use the services of a lawyer or approach any of the government tax agencies for clearification.
Adedunmade Onibokun Esq.