The presidency has clarified that the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Babatunde Fowler, is not under any investigation over the agency’s failure to meet revenue generation targets.
Most national dailies had reported yesterday that Fowler was being investigated over the gaps between revenue generation targets and actual collection reflected in the Federation Account.
In a reaction to the reports, presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu, said that the letter from the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, to Fowler, on which the reports were based, merely raised concerns over the negative run of the tax revenue collection in recent times.
Kyari had in the memo he wrote to Fowler demanded explanation from him on why the FIRS had failed to meet its revenue targets between 2015 and 2018.
Consequently, he said that it would appeared that the country might be heading for a fiscal crisis if urgent steps were not taken to halt the negative trends in target setting and target realisation in tax revenue.
He said: “Anyone conversant with Federal Executive Council (FEC) deliberations would have observed that issues on revenue form the number one concern of what Nigeria faces today, and therefore, often take a prime place in discussions of the body.
“It is noteworthy and highly commendable that under this administration, the number of taxable adults has increased from 10 million to 20 million with concerted efforts still on-going to bring a lot more into the tax net.”
