The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday put up a defence for the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Babatunde Folwer, over the controversies of alleged misappropriation in the Inland Revenue Service, accusing President Muhammadu Buhari of trying to make fowler a scapegoat. The party chided the Chief of Staff to President Buhari over alleged distortion of information to pull down the FIRS Executive Chairman and cover up the complicity of the Presidency in the deals.
The PDP argued that the revelation of variance pointing to the siphoning of trillions of naira, taxpayers’ money collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) further confirmed the party’s stance that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Buhari Presidency is neck-deep in corruption and looting of Nigerians common patrimony.
The party remarked: “this discovery of variances in the remission of taxes vindicates our concerns about underhand dealings and frittering of monies collected as taxes in the last four years.”
PDP in a statement on Monday in Abuja by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, 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.”
The PDP remarked 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 Muhammadu Buhari’s misrule,” the party declared.
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 by the Buhari administration.”
The party maintained: “the stealing of our taxes by APC agents has brought so much anguish to Nigerians, who suffer the brunt of collapsed infrastructure, decay of social amenities and a crippled national economy under President Buhari.”
The PDP, therefore, demanded 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.