As Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu had a reputation for squeezing water from a stone by extracting taxes from even the most unlikely people. Stories still abound in Lagos of how menacing tax collectors forced struggling market women and micro traders to pay taxes. For Tinubu, the end always justifies the means. And the end, leaving aside the self-interest, was to significantly increase the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR); the means was multiple taxes and levies. Well, it worked! Lagos State’s IGR rose from N14.6bn a year in 1999, when he became governor, to N83.02bn in 2007 when he left office.