Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU, Hafsat Bakari, has vowed that the era of tax avoidance and evasion in the country is over.
Mrs Bakari made the avowal during the first National Revenue Assurance Summit between the NFIU and states internal revenue service in Abuja on Monday.
She said this became imperative to block revenue leakages and enable the government to adequately utilise sources to meet the yearnings of the citizens.
While noting that NFIU works on tax crimes through the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mrs Bakari said a lot of loopholes have been identified at the subnational levels.
“All participants at this meeting are aware of the fact that our nation has moved into a new fiscal era, where the imperative of governance and the need to deliver. infrastructure and vital services to our citizens require innovation and out of the box thinking.
“At the national and sub-national level, our collective ambition to grow the economy requires us to diversify the source of revenue available to government. We cannot afford to rely just on proceeds from the oil and gas industry.
“To build the schools we need, to educate our children, to provide effective healthcare, to build roads and bridges, to secure our communities, we recognise that our focus should shift towards internally generated revenue.
“Therefore, we need to have efficient and effective systems in place to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of the tax burden. There can be no room for tax avoidance and tax evasion.
She said NFIU has established a dedicated tax crimes and revenue assurance department, to sanction defaulters.
“While our work on tax crimes initially focused on supporting the Federal Inland Revenue Service, we took a further step to explore partnerships with sub-national counterparts.
“This expansion was predicated on the recognition that the vast majority of tax evasion happens at the state level.
“Our analysis led us to the conclusion that the data on financial transactions held within the unit would be of tremendous benefit to State Internal Revenue Services as well,” she said.
She, however, charged revenue services of upholding international conventions and standards to protect the integrity of the information that would be provided to them.
“To this end, our approach to working with states is built on the establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding which sets out the principles, objectives and limitations of the intelligence provided.
“We have also developed, using our in-house technical resources, a secure platform for requesting and receiving intelligence from the NFIU, the Crime Records Information Management System (CRIMS).
“Through CRIMS, we have entirely eliminated paper records, which are prone to compromise, and we have robust audit mechanisms to ensure we are aware of who is asking for and who is receiving our intelligence.
“We conduct robust training for the authorised users of the CRIMS platform, which includes understanding the role of the NFIU, the type of information we hold, and the overall intelligence cycle.
