The order empowers the private sector to intervene as financiers of road projects and ease the financial burden of the Federal Government, whilst they will be rewarded with fiscal incentives. The private sector companies funding the road project will get tax credits to the extent of the total amount spent on the roads and a non-taxable benefit set at the extant Central Bank of Nigeria monetary policy rate and an additional two per cent of the total project cost.
The first poser for this discourse is whether Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd is a private company or private capital that entitles it to participate in the financing scheme and benefits of this order. Is NNPC Ltd a private company in the sense of its ownership and funding coming from private capital? The poser is not about the technical definition of a private or public company in the legal parlance of technical company law.
The second challenge is that beyond excluding states and local government roads, this order reduces the corporate income tax available for sharing between the three tiers of government. After getting the benefit of having its roads constructed or reconstructed, the Federal Government also lines up as a participant in whatever is left and brought to the Federation Account table.