No Payment Was Made After My Leave Was Announced – Ex-FIRS Boss, Nami

The former chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Muhammad Nami, has spoken on the approval of N6 billion as payments to several contractors and consultants after being sacked by President Bola Tinubu.

Naija News had reported that Nami, who was sacked on September 14 by Tinubu and replaced with Zacchaeus Adedeji, was alleged to have approved over N11 billion for payments, two days after his sack.

According to TheCable, Nami directed staff of the finance, audit, and internal affairs departments to work on Saturday and Sunday to perfect some financial transactions while files were allegedly moved from the agency’s headquarters to his house, where they were said to have been “backdated and signed”.

Sources familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the former FIRS boss also moved about N5 billion to the account of the Joint Tax Board (JTB) from the FIRS account.

Reacting to the development in a statement issued on Thursday, Nami said that the reported sum was part of N16 billion worth of “outstanding commitments”.

He said the N5 billion paid to the Joint Tax Board was earmarked to fund the activities of the presidential committee on tax and fiscal policy reforms, which is led by Taiwo Oyedele.

The former FIRS chairman, however, disclosed that no payment was made by the Service after the announcement of his pre-retirement leave on September 14.

The statement reads: “Fundamentally, it is important to note that no payment was made by the Service after the announcement of my pre-retirement leave as claimed by this story. Approval for payment in the Service is one step of the journey to payment. It is the custom that when a new Executive Chairman resumes office, he would review, validate and make final authorisation before any payments can be made.

“It is important to note for the record that all decisions reached and extant liabilities/ commitments of the Service during my stay in office are contained in the handover notes I made available to my successor, Mr. Zaccheus Adedeji. He is fully briefed on everything. For clarity, the items listed in the Cable Newspaper Report were part of the N16 billion outstanding commitments contained in our handover note.

“The N5 billion paid to the Joint Tax Board was paid to fund the activities of the Presidential Committee on Tax and Fiscal Policy Reforms two months before I left office. It was paid after we received a letter to that effect from the office of Mr. President signed by Zaccheus Adedeji himself.”

Nami also spoke on his foreign trip after his sack, saying that the claim he travelled out of the country following the approval of the payments was attempts to portray a picture that he hurriedly left the country.

Defending his time in office, Nami said every decision he made was within the ambit of the law and within the lawful powers he exercised then as executive chairman.

The former FIRS boss added that despite inheriting N1.4 billion at the FIRS, he left “N129 billion in the purse of the service”.