Social contracts in transformation: Tax reform in Nigeria

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This application seeks to develop work on the evolution and impacts of new forms of direct and indirect taxation in Nigeria, an African federal polity hitherto heavily reliant on natural resource rents, which is now undergoing an emergent transformation towards direct taxation in many of its constituent states. By looking at how citizens and state actors perceive and interact with new revenue-raising initiatives by sub-national bodies, I seek to critically examine expectations of new forms of social contract between citizens and state, and to identify the emergent implications for modes of governance, using political anthropology as the central methodology. The Nigerian state has been heavily fiscally reliant on oil revenues for the past four decades, producing a situation which has led to a mutual disconnect in accountability between citizens and state. Now, many of the Federal Republic of Nigeria's 36 constituent states are looking beyond their limited share of national oil resources to raise more money from direct taxes on the economic activities of people and businesses. Classical social theory on taxation and accountability suggests that as governments introduce direct taxation, publics will make more demands on government to show what is done with 'their' money, leading to a social contract in which taxation and representation are mutually productive.Contemporary Nigeria is an ideal place to see this process in action and to test its assumptions. Ideas of social contract, or of the roles of government and public, and of state and political power more broadly, are strongly conditioned by historical experiences and cultural framings which mean that we cannot simply assume a normative idea of social contract. Current tax reforms are situated atop an accumulation of past practices and meanings, which implicate our consideration of precolonial, colonial and post-colonial administrative and coercive practices, communal identities, political loyalties and ideas of governmental authority and legitimacy, or the lack of it. The research will build upon my previous research on policing in Nigeria, by adopting a similar perspective, working as participant observer not just with the public as they interact with revenue officials and become subject to new forms of taxation demands, but also working 'inside' the state with revenue officials themselves, to ascertain with what meanings they imbue their work, and what practices they evolve in pursuit of its goals, as an emergent transition in political economy gathers pace.