By Halimah Olamide
Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Dr. Zaccheus Adedeji, has hinted of the need for the present administration to discontinue the N2.59 trillion Tax Credit Scheme introduced by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2021.
Adedeji stated this when he appeared before the Senate committee on Finance.
He appeared along with officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
Adedeji said this as the administrators of the Tax Credit Scheme, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, provided specific information about the $3.3 billion loan obtained for the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to stabilize the Naira in the foreign exchange market.
He expressed concerns over the introduction of the N2.59 trillion Tax Credit Scheme through Executive Order 7 of 2021 under the leadership of Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
During his appearance before the Senate Committee on Finance, he was accompanied by the Chief Financial Officer of NNPCL, Umoru Ajiya.
He said, “The Mandate of FIRS lumped with execution of Tax Credit Scheme for road construction is to access, collect tax and remit it into the federation account and not to appropriate it for any purpose through executive order.
It is not the duty of FIRS and NNPCL to be paying contractors.
“The Ministry of Works should be in line with its core mandate , be allowed to award road contracts and pay for them.
“The scheme, to many people, serves as a faster way for road reconstruction or rehabilitation across the country, but we should stop increasing speed in the wrong direction.
As a way of stopping the wrong approach, FIRS and the Central Bank of Nigeria are holding a meeting with the Ministry of Works Friday this week.
“At the meeting, we are going to take stock of what had been done through the scheme and thereafter we will toe the right path.
“We should, in a nutshell, not continue on the wrong trajectory,” he said.