PDP states position on leaked memo querying FIRS for discrepancies in revenue collections

The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the Presidency of indulging in neck-deep corruption and looting of taxpayers’ monies. It said  the leaked letter was an attempt by agents of the Buhari Presidency to cover its complicity “by seeking a fall guy in the executive chairman of FIRS, Fowler”.

The party was reacting to the leaked letter allegedly signed by the Chief of Staff (COS) to the President, Abba Kyari, dated August 8, 2019, and addressed to the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) chairman, Babatunde Fowler.

Kyari had in the said letter asked Fowler to explain ‘significant’ variances in budgeted collections and actual collections of tax in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The PDP, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Monday said that the revelation of variances “pointing to the siphoning of trillions of naira, taxpayers’ money collected by the FIRS” further confirms its stance that the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Muhammadu Buhari Presidency “is neck-deep in corruption and looting of our common patrimony.”

The party claimed that the leaked letter was an attempt by agents of the Buhari Presidency to cover its complicity “by seeking a fall guy in the executive chairman of FIRS, Fowler”.

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According to it, the discovery of variances in the remission of taxes vindicates its concerns about supposed underhand dealings and frittering of monies collected as taxes in the last four years.

It said that “a critical study of the leaked correspondence from the COS to the president, Malam 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 has 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 party went further to say that it was appalling that the Buhari Presidency allegedly 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 FOREX for food by the Buhari administration.”

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

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