Gov Ben Ayade Abolishes Produce Tax For Small Businesses + Breaks Down In Tears

The governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade has taken the plight of the poor in the state into consideration and has abolished tax paying for small business owners.....

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In a press meeting with the newly inaugurated team of Christian men and women to see this come to pass , he said;


''We implore you to know that your responsibility from today going forward is to put an end to illegal taxes on people. 

We have a tax law here that prescribes those who are exempted from tax, those categories of people and those that from time to time may be so announced by the governor, including every single hotel that has less than 50 rooms in Calabar and in the whole state, today are exempted from tax.


We have exempted all Okada riders, taxi drivers, airport taxi drivers. We have exempted small saloon owners, small catering and restaurant points, mama put , eatery points. All those small small basic survival people selling of products, struggling to eke a living, they have been exempted today from paying tax.


We have exempted them because it is better for me as a governor that I'ld rather tax my brain than to tax my people.

Great Cross Riverians, you have the right for anybody who comes before you to demand tax, you have the right to say "Stop!!! The governor has said we should not pay tax."


Why will a small person carry bananas from his farm to go and sell, and produce people are there taxing him for his products?
Why will someone carry groundnuts to go to the market and somebody is putting checkpoints on the road to collect money from a groundnut seller?


This is not Ben Ayade, this is not my nature, I am not wired for this insensitivity to a weaker person. I have abolished produce tax.
Let farmers earn their money, let them keep their money. Because you didn't give them fertilizers, you did not irrigate the soil, you did not prepare the soil for them. You did not do the land clearing for them, why do you want to tax them?


Why do you put pressure on that your small brother or sister whose situation is much worse? Why would we expect people who don't have scholarships for their children, people who don't have good schools, they struggle to pay, struggle with the uniform, struggle to have security in their schools, struggle to get water, with their generators and the government who is providing almost nothing to come back to those people and tax them.


I think this is the greatest injustice . I never knew that 5 years in two offices as governor, I would still find somebody who will live in a thatched house in Cross River state . I am almost crying because I knew how prepared I was, but it didn't end the way I had planned for the state.


And I just think that somewhere God will just help me because I really wish that I could really help, I really wish that I could really help (he breaks down in tears).


It's very painful truly. I can't put 5 years and I've not been able to achieve the change. I know of some small people whose businesses are closed because even after signing into law that they should stop collecting tax, I still find people giving political appointments for a completely different thing , then we see them move back to these same people and dragging them and taxing them.


If we have to pay tax, let me contact the anti-tax agency ,they give us a tax book of whether we fall under the category of those who pay tax or not.
So your vehicles, your public life, your telephone numbers will be in the public domain because everybody must call you to know whether they are to pay tax or not to pay tax.


And so I picked only men of God and women of God to serve here. I charge you that by the time you are done, let your agency be a world class example for other states and countries to emulate.
If God sees into my heart, let Him take every moment of my life if He can make every single Cross Riverian rich , if He can take every single Cross Riverian out of poverty, let Ben Ayade and the Ayades', let us be poor for Cross Riverians to be comfortable.


Let me see Calabar thrive again, and this is part of my post Covid-19 response.''