By Busari Kabirat
Zacheus Adedeji, who is the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), had on Wednesday, criticized President Muhammadu Buhari’s led administration over the sum of N2.59 trillion Tax Credit Scheme for road construction.
One of the executors of the scheme made it known about $3.3 billion loan facility secured for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the stabilisation of the naira in the foreign exchange market as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is involved.
However, the $3.3 billion loan facility, NNPCL informed the committee members that it was secured to support CBN to suppress forex volatility.
The Chief Financial Officer of NNPCL, Umoru Ajiya, had yesterday, coupled with Adedeji appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance to shed light on the implementation of the scheme.
Ajiya disclosed that the scheme has aid in fixing spoilt roads across the six geo-political zones with N664 billion spent so far, which the FIRS boss criticized that the scheme was unlawful and should be stopped immediately.
Adedeji said, “It is not the duty of FIRS and NNPCL to be paying contractors. The Ministry of Works should be in line with its core mandate and be allowed to award road contracts and pay them.”
The Senate committee, led by Senator Sani Musa, agreed with Adedeji’s submission, stating the relevance of provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended) were against the scheme because all revenues generated by government agencies were supposed to be remitted into the consolidated revenue fund.
