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Wednesday, 17 April 2019

Nigeria's Finance Minister To Visit FIRS As EFCC Investigates 6 Bln Naira Scam

Nigeria's finance minister Zainab Ahmed is expected to visit the Headquarters of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on Thursday in the wake of allegations of corruptions against top officials of the service.
Ahmed is expected to hold meetings with the chairman of the service, Babatunde Fowler and other top officials of the service on the issue of fraud and other issues related to the statutory function of the service.
The nation's anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) had detained nine of the service top officials over allegations of fraudulently paying about 6 billion naira into accounts of some staff for no justifications.
The fraud was said to have been committed by some top officials of the service through the transfer of huge money into accounts of some staff in the form of duty tour allowance payment.
Many of the staff who got the alert for duty tour payment were alleged to have been instructed to transfer substaintail part of the money to a certain account and then keep the balance.
Operatives of the EFCC are currently interrogating some of the staff involved in the scam payment, which blew open through an insider, who wrote a petition to the anti-graft agency on the issue.
One of the top officials said to be involved in the scam is said to be on medical vacation abroad and may not be returning soon, according to a source close to him.
Peter Hena, who is one of the most senior directors of the agency is said to currently hospitalised abroad and may not be able to respond to the EFCC question on his culpability in the crime.
Another source was trying to link the chairman of the service to the fraud, but no concrete evidence to link him as at the time of writing this report.
The ministerial visit was said to be part of instruction from President Mohammadu Buhari to the minister on a fact-finding mission to unravel the real issue behind the scam and report back to the cabinet.
Top presidency sources disclosed that head may roll at the agency at the end of the EFCC investigations as more issues are being thrown up, which could lead to the unearthing of more scam in the service.
"The presidency is waiting for the outcome of the ongoing investigations by the EFCC and the fact-finding mission of the finance minister to the agency," our source told us on Wednesday.
The FIRS reported over 5.32 trillion naira revenue collection last year, the highest in history of the service, with the closest collection of 5.07 trillion recorded in 2012.
The service has been credited with a lot of reform, with improvement in revenue collection methods, however, allegations that the service has an overbloated cost of revenue collection, higher than its counterparts in other countries.

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