PDP accuses APC, Presidency of complicity in variances in tax collection

By Tunde Opalana, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said the revelation of variances in tax revenue collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) further confirms its stance that the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Buhari Presidency is neck-deep in corruption and looting of the nation’s common patrimony.

The party said this discovery of variances in the remission of taxes vindicates its concerns about underhand dealings and siphoning of trillions of naira taxpayers’ money in the last four years.

It noted that Nigerians are 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.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan in a statement on Monday said that a critical study of the leaked correspondence from the Chief of Staff 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 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 Buhari’s misrule.

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

The PDP described as 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 imports by the Buhari administration.”

The party 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.