Shortfall in FIRS remittances: PDP accuses APC, Buhari of complicity

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has observed that the revelation of variances “pointing to the siphoning of trillions of naira, taxpayers’ money” collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) has further confirmed the party’s stance that the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Buhari Presidency is neck-deep in corruption and looting of our common patrimony.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Monday by its national spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the discovery of variances in the remission of taxes vindicated the party’s concerns about underhand dealings and frittering of monies collected as taxes in the last four years.

The party noted that Nigerians were not deceived by “the desperation by agents of the Buhari Presidency to cover its complicity by seeking a fall guy in the Executive Chairman of FIRS, Babatunde Fowler.”

ALSO READ: Oyo govt plans decongestion of Ibadan

The PDP posited that a critical study of the leaked correspondence from the Chief of Staff to the President, 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 statement added: “The correspondence also further confirms that our nation and her economy have 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 PDP said it was “appalling that the Buhari Presidency has 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 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.”

The PDP, therefore, urged the National Assembly to come to the rescue by holding a public inquest into the handling of taxes collected by the FIRS in the last four years, take urgent steps to recover the stolen funds and channel such to projects that have direct bearing on the welfare of Nigerians.