The Presidency has revealed the reason behind the non-renewal of Babatunde Fowler as Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
Garba Shehu, presidential aide to President Buhari disclosed that Fowler was unable to generate revenue for the government. However, he expressed optimism that the tenure of Muhammad Nami, the new FIRS Chairman will generate adequate funds to run the Buhari-led administration. Babatunde Fowler’s tenure ended Dec 9th, 2019.
Shehu made this known while speaking with newsmen in Abuja over the weekend
In Shehu’s words; “It is not a scandal to borrow, the bad thing about borrowing is when you deployed it to your pocket. This has happened in the past in this country, President Buhari is borrowing to do railway, to do East-West expressway, to do second Niger bridge, to do Mabilla power, to do Abuja-Kano expressway, to do Ajaokuta-Abuja gas pipeline.
“These are projects that are beneficial to the economy, these are basic infrastructure projects – railway, power – without which this country cannot achieve development.
“So, if you ask me, from my own understanding, the problem we have in this country is the revenue issue. We have a revenue problem because we are unable to generate as much money as it is needed to do more capital infrastructure and also service debt.
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“Because of the low revenue earnings, people look at the size of our debt repayment and they scream. But government is doing something about this and I’m happy you have seen the change that has happened in FIRS, give them a chance, let see how they would perform. Government is optimistic that things will look upward and the revenue will improve. And once there is inflow that is sufficient to do a lot of these things, we may not even need to borrow.”