Muhammad Mamman Nami is the current Executive Chairman of Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the agency responsible for assessing, collecting and accounting for tax and other revenues accruing to the Federal Government of Nigeria. And he is serving Nigeria very well. I mean Chairman Nami has brought new ideas into the Service. We need to commend him. While we stay here and rant when public holders disappoint, innovators like Nami deserve commendation. He hit 98% of their target in 2020 despite the pandemic and that means, he was able to close many loopholes. If not the fact that they waived federal taxes for companies with revenue below say N25 million or so, they could have exceeded that target. This man is a really bright spot and I want us to appreciate him in our nation.
- Nairametrics reported that the FIRS announced that it generated N4,952,243,711,728.37 as tax revenue in the 2020 fiscal year. This is about 98% of the tax target of N5.076 trillion that was set for the FIRS by the Federal Government.
- The FIRS also announced the creation of 35 new Tax Audit Units to combat illicit financial flow across the country.
Add the big one: he is using more FIRS workers over consultants which means the government is keeping the money collected. Of course, we do hope the revenue is put into great use. This explains that public servants can execute if the right leader is there. This tweet by President Buhari tells you that Nigeria can indeed work if we get innovators in the system.
“We must use technology to plug all revenue loopholes. To this end, I have directed all government agencies and business enterprises to grant FIRS access to their systems for seamless connection. FIRS must fully deploy automation, in line with international best practices.” Simply, FIRS wants to monitor the government agencies and if it does that many good things will happen.”
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This is well commendable.
We must use technology to plug all revenue loopholes. To this end, I have directed all government agencies and business enterprises to grant @firsNigeria access to their systems for seamless connection. FIRS must fully deploy automation, in line with international best practices.
— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) January 21, 2021
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You started by sounding like the ruling party’s spokesman, but your second paragraph gave me some hope.
Now that we know that someone can be a public servant and meet a set target, it remains to learn how to use money prudently as a public servant, because we remain abysmal and atrocious there.
Once we innovate on that count, ordinary people will feel the impact of our innovation.
God bless Nigeria.