All Progressives Congress governorship candidate in Ogun State, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi, says he will aggressively pursue and recover corporate taxes and revenue generated by industrial entities operating within the state but remitting their top-level executives’ taxes to Lagos State.
Senator Adeola currently representing Ogun West Senatorial District in the National Assembly, made this declaration during an interactive session with journalists at the Ogun State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists Secretariat in Abeokuta, where he outlined his political agenda for the 2027 governorship election.
The APC governorship flagbearer, who laid bare on his economic strategy before the newsmen on Friday, expressed concern that despite Ogun State being recognised as Nigeria’s primary industrial hub, its Internally Generated Revenue fails to reflect its extensive industrial base due to structural tax leakages.
Yayi blamed this disparity on the location of corporate headquarters, where manufacturing plants and operations are based in Ogun State while corporate headquarters, along with high-earning directors and senior managers are stationed in Lagos.
He said, “Many of these industries establish themselves in our state but take their head offices to Lagos. By doing so, the return on investment from establishing in my state cannot be compared with what it should be, because the top echelon, all the managers and directors are in Lagos, and their taxes are paid to Lagos.”
Examining the fiscal metrics between the two neighbouring states, Senator Yayi expressed regret that while Lagos achieved its ₦1.6 trillion revenue benchmark, Ogun State continues to lag behind inspite of the fact that over 30 per cent of Lagos’ corporate tax yields originate from economic activities originating in Ogun State.
The APC governorship hopeful insisted that his administration will not rely on traditional, delayed inter-state monthly tax reconciliation processes for cross-border workers, as corporate entities will be made to set up regional executive offices within a newly designated Central Business District in Abeokuta.
“I am not saying you should take your head office out of Lagos, but in my new Central Business District here in Abeokuta, come and establish your regional office so that I can have some of your managers and even an Executive Director here. I strongly feel that more than 30 percent of that revenue from Lagos is my money, and I have to collect it,” Yayi said.
Senator Adeola also pledged to clamp down on uncoordinated federal mining activities within Ogun State, asserting that external commercial operators frequently extract the state’s solid mineral resources using federal permits without direct financial equity flowing to the state government.
On employment and local labour laws, Yayi kicked against major industrial complexes’ reliance on non-resident labour forces and casual positions for indigenous workers.
He therefore promised to institute a mandatory local content policy requiring firms to offer first right of refusal and managerial quotas to qualified residents of Ogun State.
