Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, has queried the chief executive of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Babatunde Fowler, over worsening tax collection since 2015.
Sources within the FIRS confirmed the development on Sunday after a letter querying Fowler’s delivery appeared on the social media in the morning.
In the query stamp-dated August 8, by Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff to the President, said the presidency “observed significant variances between the budgeted collections and actual collections for the period 2015 to 2018.”
The FIRS under Mr Fowler has not been able to meet collection targets, a different trend from the preceding years.
In 2015, FIRS set N4.7 trillion target but was only able to make N3.7 trillion in the actual collection. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the target collections were N4.2 trillion, N4.8 trillion and N6.7 trillion but the actual collections were N3.3 trillion, N4.0 trillion and N5.3 trillion, respectively.
Worried by the variances, the presidency asked Mr Fowler for an explanation.
“Accordingly, you are kindly invited to submit a comprehensive variance analysis explaining the reasons for the variances between the budgeted collections and actual collections for each main tax item for each of the years 2015 to 2018,” Mr Kyari wrote.
Mr Fowler was appointed FIRS boss in 2015, the year Mr Buhari was elected president. He succeeded Samuel Odugbesan appointed by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Mr Fowler had held a similar role in Lagos State, Nigeria’s richest state.
