The Presidency has revealed why the tenure of former Federal Inland Revenue Service boss, Babatunde Fowler, was not renewed.
The Senior Special Assistant on Media to the president, Garba Shehu, disclosed that the inability to generate enough revenue for the country led to the non-renewal of Fowler’s tenure.
Addresaing journalists in Abuja, Shehu expressed optimism that the revenue will improve due to the changes which saw Fowler’s exit.
“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.
“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.”
Babatunde Fowler has since been replaced as chairman of the FIRS by Muhammad Nami.
