This morning, I got an email from my country's Federal Internal Revenue Service saying my taxes for 2016 are unpaid. Given that I pride myself on having a good documentation system, I almost shat myself when I could not find the letter forwarding the tax payments to them. If I could not prove I had paid, I would pay again plus a penalty. Luckily, I remembered that an electronic filing system was rolled out last year and I had filed the evidence of payment online. I had also sent an email with the documents just in case the e-filing system had failed. I resent paying taxes; which is a sentiment that I am sure is pretty widely shared globally. However, in places like Nigeria, where government hates citizens, taxes are just adding insult to injury. I am not exaggerating when I say government hates citizens; or rather, government officials hate us. It seems government officials think their job is to make life hard for us. Most of the time, we only have contact with them when they are out to fuck us up; usually using the power of their offices to cause problems which can only be resolved upon payment of a bribe.
The upside to this is if one knows the right people to bribe, one can get almost anything.