2022 budget proposal: Yoruba peace group calls for forensic audit of FIRS

The Yoruba Leadership and Peace Initiative (TYLPI) has called on the federal government to order a forensic audit of the operations of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

The group said the 2022 budget proposal of the FIRS suggests that a “wholesale plunder” is ongoing in the agency.

The Punch had reported that FIRS earmarked about N550 million for refreshments and N200 million for sporting activities. It also reported that the agency budgeted N262.5 million for security votes and N17.8 billion for “miscellaneous” expenses.

But the agency said it only earmarked N11.36 billion for administrative expenses — and not N17.8 billion as reported.

Speaking on the development in a statement issued on Sunday, Tunde Ipinmisho, TYLPI publicity director, described the 2022 budget proposal of the FIRS recently forwarded to the national assembly as ” bogus”.

“The FIRS, one of the nation’s leading revenue collecting agencies, had proposed a budget of N228 billion for its services in 2022, a figure higher than the National Assembly’s N134 billion and the Judiciary’s N120 billion,” the statement reads.

“The figure also surpasses those of each of 22 states for the 2021 fiscal year.

“It (TYLPI) therefore urged the federal government, which itself had been piling up monumental debts in the past six years, to institute a forensic audit into the finances of the FIRS.”

The group also said the FIRS budget proposal was an “insult” to Nigerians who have to “cope with” bad roads, unstable power supply, ill-equipped hospitals and decaying educational infrastructure.

It said a cursory look at the breakdown of the tax body’s proposal would lead observers to the inevitable conclusion that the agency had created “phoney” budget subheads to support the “prodigal intention” of its managers to provide avenues for looting.

It further described the “allocation of N2.8 billion for uniforms, N1.5 billion for photocopying machines, N1 billion for generator fueling, N1.3 billion for cleaning and fumigation, N3 billion for the printing of non-security documents and N550 million for meals as the financial equivalent of rape”.

TYLPI said the budget figures proposed by the FIRS should send clear signals to the government that those it put in charge of the agency do not subscribe to the administration’s anti-corruption policy.

It, therefore, urged the federal government to follow the precedent it set in the case of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by ordering a holistic audit and diagnostic examination of the agency.

With its current budget proposal, TYLPI said those in charge of the FIRS had given themselves out as a “conquering army seeking to appropriate to themselves the resources of the conquered territory as further confirmation of its conquest”.

It added that the proposal had further strengthened the case for the restructuring of the country to make more funds available to the states, rather than having an “over-bloated centre awash with money which it doles out to the beggarly federating units at its pleasure”.

The group also said while critical sectors were being starved of funds, a single government agency could be seeking an appropriation that was larger than those of two arms of the government and the budgets of each of 22 states.

TYLPI advised the national assembly not to approve of the “bogus budget figures emanating from the FIRS”.

It also said the legislators should critically examine the budgets of all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the government.