Technocrat Media Nigeria
ABUJA – Muhammed Nami, FIRS chairman says the sealing of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) corporate headquarters in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Thursday over tax debts.
The FIRS boss made the disclosure on Friday.
According to THECABLE, Mr. Nami did not state the specific amount but said NDDC owes an “outstanding tax of N26 billion”.
This is not the first time the tax agency is carrying out the act. In 2018, the Rivers Inland Revenue Service (RIRS) sealed off the NDDC headquarters in the state due to withholding tax estimated at over N600 million.
After a year, the same was done over unpaid withholding tax to the tune of N50 billion.
In April 2021, the FIRS directed all ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) to remit all outstanding tax liabilities to the service within 60 days.
It said failure to do will lead to the deduction of unremitted taxes from the budgetary allocation of the defaulting MDAs.
The FIRS boss said: “Tax debt is a priority all over the world. We’ve sent a signal to ministries, departments, and agencies of government that business is not going to be usual in this country.
“You cannot keep government money and force the government, whether at local, state, and federal level, to continue to borrow…because these monies (taxes) are used by the government to fund their budgetary requirement.
“We’ve discussed (FIRS and NDDC), even with some cabinet members, and we’ve reached an agreement which will be made known to Nigerians between now (Friday) and Monday.”
Ibitoye Abosede, NDDC director of corporate affairs in her response, said the development was due to a gap in communication between NDDC and the new management of FIRS.
She said, “It is an ongoing thing. In 2018, this same happened. It is unremitted withholding tax for some years up to 2013. It is not a recent thing,”.
“We have done reconciliation and they came with that amount. In 2018, when they sealed the place, we raised an agreement with them to seek ways to deduct at source from what the government is owing to us so that we knock it off.
“I remembered that in 2018, we paid N1.5bn but since that 2018 we haven’t had a board and it hampered the efforts of deducting it at the source. We don’t have regular subvention from the federal government.
“Efforts are ongoing to make sure the issues are resolved. We have a new chairman in FIRS and we are reaching out to him to let him understand our previous agreement.”
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