by Olaitan Babatunde
A Nigerian household can pay taxes and still buy a generator because public electricity is unreliable. It can pay for security and still hire private guards. It can pay to drill a borehole because a dependable water supply is unavailable. Parents can contribute levies to schools, patients can pay out of pocket for healthcare, and commuters can spend hours navigating roads that require urgent repairs. These expenses are not all the same, and some private services are choices rather than substitutes for public provision. But together they raise a difficult question: if citizens contribute to government revenue, why must they keep paying privately for so many things they expect public institutions to provide?
Taxes are one of the main ways governments finance public responsibilities. Depending on the tax and the level of government, revenue may support education, healthcare, roads, public administration, security and other services. Nigeria’s tax system changed significantly with the Tax Acts enacted in 2025, including the Nigeria Tax Act and the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, which took effect under the new framework from 1 January 2026. But paying tax does not mean that a taxpayer’s money is automatically reserved for a particular service in their neighbourhood. Public revenue is pooled and allocated through government budgets and other lawful funding arrangements. The real accountability question is whether public authorities raise, allocate and spend that revenue in accordance with the law and whether the spending produces results.
The problem becomes clearer when we distinguish between paying for a public service and paying for an alternative because the public service is inadequate. A household buying bottled water is not necessarily evidence that government has failed to provide water; people buy it for different reasons. But when communities repeatedly have to fund basic infrastructure that public authorities are responsible for delivering, the gap between public revenue and lived experience deserves scrutiny. Private generators, boreholes and security arrangements can help families and businesses cope, but they also transfer costs to individuals. A household with enough money may be able to purchase alternatives, while a poorer household may have to live with the service gap. The result is that access to basic necessities can depend heavily on personal income rather than the quality of public provision.
This is where the social contract becomes more than a phrase in a textbook. Citizens are expected to obey the law and meet their lawful tax obligations. In return, government is expected to govern within the law, provide public goods, protect rights and manage public resources responsibly. This is not a simple transaction in which each taxpayer receives a personal refund in services equivalent to their individual payment. Public services benefit people in different ways, and governments have competing needs and limited resources. Still, limited resources cannot be a permanent excuse for poor planning, unexplained expenditure, abandoned projects or weak accountability. Where revenue is insufficient, officials should be able to explain the choices made. Where funds have been allocated, citizens should be able to ask what was released, what was spent and what was delivered.
Citizens can follow that chain. Budget documents show what government intends to spend. Procurement records can reveal which contractors received projects and at what cost. Audit reports can identify financial irregularities or weaknesses in controls. Legislative oversight can question ministries and agencies about implementation. The Freedom of Information Act 2011 also provides a route for requesting records from public institutions, subject to the law’s provisions and exemptions. Instead of asking only whether government collected enough money, citizens can ask more specific questions: Was the project included in the budget? Was money released? Who received the contract? Was the work completed? Who inspected it? If it failed, what happened next?
Paying taxes does not guarantee perfect public services, and private spending is not automatically proof of government failure. But a system in which citizens pay into public revenue and repeatedly pay again to secure essential services should invite careful examination of service delivery, budget execution and accountability. The answer is not to dismiss tax obligations or assume that every public service can be provided immediately. It is to insist that tax collection and public spending be judged together. Citizens should meet their lawful obligations, and governments should be able to show what they have done with the resources entrusted to them. A tax receipt is evidence of payment. It should not be the end of the conversation about what the public receives in return.
