아프리카ㆍ중동

A moment of reflection on the current situation of today’s development in Nigeria suggests that the acquisition of that power stated by a renowned economist Nicholas Kaldor, of post-war generation who was asked to say his view on the relationship that exist between taxation and state development, enumerated a lot of things but summarized his words in one line: “the heart of a state development lies on taxation”, cannot be taken for granted. This paper therefore described the situation of taxation in Nigeria and enumerated the indispensable role of taxation for state development. Primary and secondary data were used. The primary data were collected from the distributed questionnaires while the secondary data were collected from the World Bank Indicators. The data were analyzed and they showed that taxation contributes less to GDP of the Nigerian economy since the IMF threshold of tax revenue to GDP is 15% while the highest taxation was added to the Nigerian GDP is 2.3% in 2010. The paper therefore, concluded that taxation is indispensable for the development of a nation (there is a positive relationship between taxation and state development) and that the ability of tax to stimulate economic growth or development in Nigeria will result from the deliberately designed regimes that will encourage compliance of those who should pay this tax. Hence, the paper recommended that all Nigerians should endeavour to pay their taxes and while this is done, the government should be set to achieve promotion of fiscal responsibility through government transparency and judicious use of revenue generated, promote economic stabilization, and correct market failures or imperfection and to facilitate economic growth.