The Senate on Tuesday confirmed the nomination of Dr. Zacch Adedeji as the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
Adedeji, who appeared at the upper chamber for screening elaborately spoke on his plans to improve the nation’s revenue, referring to the dearth of information in the oil and gas sector.
While lamenting the paucity of data on the hydrocarbon resources industry to fully capture taxes payable by the oil and gas companies, promised that most of the leakages would be halted during his tenure as the chairman of the agency.
According to him, the major challenge militating against plans to fully optimize the nation’s revenue potential for development had been inadequate data, stressing that developing such a credible database for taxation purposes would be one of his focal areas of concentration during his tenure.
Specifically, he maintained that a credible database on taxes payable by operating entities in the oil and gas industry would provide adequate information on the exact number of vessels of crude brought into the county and the concomitant tax.
In addition, he pointed out that the data would help in identifying the very rich people, who are paying insufficient tax, and boost non-oil taxes for the government
Adedeji promised to centralize the identification system in Nigeria and advance the nation’s data mining capacity, amongst other reformative agenda he intended to pursue while in office as the FIRS’ boss
