Taxation, Property Rights and the Social Contract in Lagos
2018
Major taxation reforms over the past decade have been interpreted as facilitating the
transformation of Lagos: once widely seen as a city in permanent crisis, it is now seen by
some observers as a beacon of megacity development. Most academic attention has
focused on personal income taxation, which comprises the lion’s share of government
revenue in Lagos. Less attention has been devoted to another crucial innovation over the
same period – the Land Use Charge – and other forms of tax related to property. In this
paper we show how the story of property taxation in Lagos since the early 2000s is
important, not only in terms of the enormous increase in collection, but because of the ways
in which property-related taxes have helped to support personal income taxation and to
solidify the fiscal contract between state and society more broadly. Moreover, we explore
how the payment of the Land Use Charge is interpreted by taxpayers, and how it is used
alongside a plethora of other documents and processes to try and shore up fragile claims to
property. In a context of intensely insecure tenure, particularly but not exclusively at the lower
ends of the socio-economic spectrum, both taxation and other kinds of formal and informal
payments play a key role in efforts to incrementally build and solidify property rights.
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