PDP Demands NASS Probe Of FIRS Tax Collections

By Editor

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has tasked the National Assembly to investigate the collection of taxes in the last four years towards recovering what it claimed on Monday were losses arising from thefts and misappropriation by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

Responding to the query issued to the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS Mr. Babatunde Fowler, the PDP said it was again a reflection of its past claims of looting by a cabal within the administration.

The PDP’s assertions followed the revelation of the query given Mr. Fowler by the presidency over shortfalls in performance in its collections.

A statement issued by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondinyan read in part:

“The party notes that Nigerians are not deceived by the desperation by agents of the Buhari Presidency to cover its complicity by seeking a fall guy in the Executive Chairman of FIRS, Babatunde Fowler.

“The PDP says that a critical study of the leaked correspondence from the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari, to the FIRS Chairman at the wake of the revelations of financial discrepancies at FIRS, totally betrays the complicity of the cabal in the Buhari Presidency.

“The correspondence also further confirms that our nation and her economy have been in the strangulating grips of a corrupt cabal, who has evidently hijacked the statutory roles and responsibilities of agencies of government, leading to the crippling of our system in the last four years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s misrule.

“The PDP describes as appalling that the Buhari Presidency has allowed its cabal a field day to loot our common patrimony, leading to the crushing economic hardship in the land, which is now worsening, with the anti-people ban on foreign exchange for food by the Buhari administration.”

“The stealing of our taxes by APC agents has brought so much anguish to Nigerians, who suffer the brunt of collapsed infrastructure, decay of social amenities and a crippled national economy under President Buhari.”

Concluding, the PDP urged the National Assembly to save the situation “by holding a public inquest into the handling of taxes collected by the FIRS in the last four years, take urgent steps to recover the stolen funds and channel such to projects that have direct bearing on the welfare of Nigerians.”

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