Panel Query FIRS Boss Over Refusal to Appear Before It

The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee has warned the Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji against his alleged refusal to appear before the committee on invitation.

The committee said that Adedeji’s actions amounted to contempt of parliament.

Chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam, said this at the resumed investigative hearing of revenue leakages in Abuja on Thursday.

The chairman, while reading the riot act against the FIRS chairman, said that this is the fourth time the committee would be inviting the FIRS chairman but he failed to show up.

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According to him, in addition to writing him officially, “we have also made sure that such letters were delivered personally to his mail box and his WhatsApp number.”

“And we condemn and describe it as irresponsible and arrogant, and we tell him that there will be consequences if he continues this contempt of the parliament.”

He said that several letters had been written to him without responses, adding that the Value Added Tax that the federal government should be collecting on Remitta had not been collected by FIRS.

He said some VAT from the revenue collected by Remitta ought to have gone to the FIRS, but added that “they would rather add the VAT together and share it with the CBN, Bank, and Remitta”.

He said, “by the time we finished our reconciliation, the money would be in hundreds of billions,” adding that “this was what they were asking the FIRS to come and collect, but the service had refused to show up.”