For so long, analyst had insisted that Nigeria was simply a mono economy which relies heavily on a single commodity prone to uncertainties for which the nation had no single control over as its sole medium of income. To many Nigerians, the country will undoubtedly go under without proceeds from crude oil and this is true to the extent of the realities in the country before Muhammed Nami was ushered into the Federal Inland Revenue Service as Executive Chairman in 2018.
To put it quite simply, the nation was hemorrhaging lots of income accruable to her before Nami was drafted in to transform the fortunes of the nation. It was just as well because, a moment a truth will grip Nigerian when in 2019, the world was besieged by the Novel Coronavirus which halted the export of Nigeria’s single foreign exchange commodity and with that, financial inflows.
You can imagine the dire straits Nigeria found herself in when coronavirus waltzed into town to completely change the way the nation envisioned its expenditure and income. In one fell swoop, the most pressing national need was the high cost required to mount a national response as well as keep the government and nation functional, viable and secured on many fronts, especially in basic needs like much needed palliatives in food, Medicare etc. in a time where international trade was completely halted.
Thankfully, FIRS was on hand to deliver ripe fruits from Nigeria’s non-oil sectors. It was indeed a miracle that at this critical time, FIRS stood up to be counted in what many analysts agreed was a major test of the stellar tax credentials that Nami brought to the job, which deployed into engineering for the first time in the history of Nigeria, an efficiently collected tax revenue that the nation used in plugging the gap left by oil revenue.
Nigerians will remember President Buhari long after he’s gone for having the presence of mind to appoint Nami to lead FIRS. As appointments into the Buhari administration go, Nami’s is unarguably the one clear example of putting round pegs in round holes. At his senate appearance after his nomination, Nami told the legislators that his experience will stand him in good stead. If any of the senators had any doubt then, I am sure those doubt would have long evaporated on the strength of the man’s unprecedented reforms and success at the post.
Its not every day in Nigeria that a well-trained Tax, Accounting, and Management practitioner with practical working experiences spanning three decades (1993-2019) in auditing, tax advisory, management services for various clients in the Banking, Manufacturing, Services and the Public Sector is spotlighted for national service. For one so evidently prepared for the job, it was not surprising when at the inauguration of the FIRS board on January 16, 2020, he rolled out his four-point agenda for the FIRS, as follows: Rebuilding FIRS’ Institutional Framework; Robust Collaboration with Stakeholders; Building a Customer-Centric Institution; and Making FIRS a Data-Centric Institution.
Nigeria being what it is, people are not easily swayed by agenda points; in fact, they view agenda points with scorn and who will blame them. Several Agenda set in the past have not been worth the papers on which they were written. However, the Nami agenda has proven beyond doubt that it was indeed an action plan carefully put together by a tax administrator forged in the fires of every tax practice and all shades of global best practices. To drive this point home, Nami organised a Corporate Plan Retreat for the management of the Service, the first in the life of the FIRS under his leadership in February 2020. It was at this retreat that he disclosed an N8.5 trillion target for 2020, broken down into oil tax target of N3.7 trillion and non-oil tax target of N4.8 trillion. Ambitious you will think? Perhaps.
And that’s why Nami insisted that the target can only be achieved through innovation and a robust never-before-seen stakeholder engagement as well as public enlightenment. The need for public sensitization can’t be overemphasised if Nigerians are to be convinced to view tax remittance as a patriotic duty. Perhaps, Nami’s greatest determination which was to strengthen the operational framework of the FIRS is the one that has received the greatest boost with the signing into law of the Finance act 2021.
Although the contentious issue of VAT collection remains in the balance, key changes to tax laws introduced in the finance act 2021 are concrete evidence of Nami’s resolve to enshrine a viable legal framework for the administration of tax matters in the country. The specific changes affect such tax streams as: Capital Gains Tax (CGTA), Companies Income Tax Act (CITA), Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act (TETFA), National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI Act), Nigeria Police Trust Fund Establishment Act, Value Added Tax Act (VATA), Federal Inland Revenue Establish Act (FIRSEA). It is my belief that the FIRS will put sufficient efforts into sensitizing Nigerians on these key changes as the success of Nami’s and president Buhari’s plan to oversee the diversification of Nigeria’s economy is incumbent on the wide acceptance of, and compliance to these changes.
Qafur writes from Kaduna
