President Buhari Questions FIRS Boss Fowler, See Why

Babatunde Fowler, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), has been queried by President Muhammadu Buhari over alleged discrepancies in tax collections from 2015 to 2018.

Naija News reports that Fowler was queried in a letter by President Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, dated August 8, 2019

This online news platform understands that the letter which was addressed to the FIRS Chairman asked him to explain reasons for ‘significant’ variances in budgeted collections and actual collections of tax in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The letter gave Fowler up till August 19 to respond to the query, this is two days after his tenure would have expired.

Fowler was expected to have handed over to the next most senior person in FIRS having been appointed for a renewable term of four years on August 18, 2015.

In the query, Kyari wrote: “Your attached letter (FIRS/EC/CWP/0249/19/027 dated 26 July 2019) on the above subject matter, refers.

“We observed significant variances between the budgeted collections and actual collections for the period 2015 to 2018. Accordingly, you are kindly invited to submit a comprehensive variance analysis explaining the reasons for the variances between budgeted and actual collections for each main tax item for each of the years 2015 to 2018.

“Furthermore, we observed that the actual collections for the period 2015 to 2017 were significantly worse than what was collected between 2012 and 2014. Accordingly, you are kindly to explain the reasons for the poor collections.

“You are kindly invited to respond by 19 August 2019.

“Please accept the assurances of my highest regards,” the query added.