A fowler, dictionaries tell us, is one who hunts birds for sport or food. His major tool is a snare, which he sets in the hope that it traps a bird suitable for his requirement. In this context, Mr. Tunde Fowler, Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), is a bird, one considered a premium species for sport or food by a group of desperate, ill-equipped and faceless fowlers.
A real fowler, we know from books on game hunting, leaves a bait around his snare, hoping that it lures the bird. The fowlers after Mr. Fowler are persuaded that the important position he occupies offers mammoth-sized baits he cannot but bite. Evidence means nothing. Conviction, of the most baseless variety, is everything. This is aired on a number of no-mark internet platforms which, in the world of fiction hawkers, are news websites.
On these travesties, they hawk, in desperate fashion, a cocktail of lies, absurd distortions and misrepresentations and anything that ties in with their agenda to calumniate.
Fowler, the fowlers claim, embarked on the recruitment 250 staff in a way that is indifferent to service procedures. There is also the predominantly inane claim that Fowler was involved in a N7 billion tax refund fraud.
Fowler’s last appointment, as every man and his dog know, was as the head of the Lagos State Board of Inland Revenue. The fowlers concluded that one Mr. Abiodun Aina was Mr. Fowler’s special assistant while he was in Lagos.
Another confection of the character assassins is that FIRS staff have been made sad by arbitrary transfers, on Fowler’s say-so, and keeping them in squalid offices.
First, the number of professionals employed by Fowler since he assumed office last August is 10, a long way from the 250 being claimed by hawkers of falsehood. Those hired are actually accomplished tax professionals with impressive performance records and are mainly contract staff, with the mandate to assist Fowler attain the 2016 target of N4.9 trillion.
Second, the transfer of experienced Deputy Directors and Assistant Directors to FIRS Training Centres is part of FIRS efforts to boost its knowledge transfer efforts and expand the capacity of its staff.
Also Mr Aina, who allegedly was Fowler’s special assistant in Lagos, is a qualified tax administrator from the private sector and had not worked in the public sector prior to now.
And the fattest of lies: N7billion tax refund.
In their desperate bid to tar Fowler, the mischief merchants, wilfully perhaps, ignored the fact that tax refunds are legitimate payments, following a credible audit procedure, to corporate taxpayers that must have overpaid their due taxes.
Money for the purpose come from the Federation Account and is appropriated for by the National Assembly. It is supported by Section 23 (1-6) of the Act establishing the FIRS.
On assumption of office last year, Fowler directed a review of all previously approved tax refunds to corporate taxpayers who applied for such to ensure that due process had been complied with.
Julius Berger Plc happened to be one of the corporate tax payers that applied for refund and were duly paid the sum of N4billion, not the N7 billion invented by vile minds. This could have been verified from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. But when there is an agenda, seeking and finding facts make get in the way of the agenda.
What Fowler did was to direct a review of approved tax refunds, not that he approved new ones. This implies that he has not approved a fresh tax refund request since he became Chairman of FIRS in last August.
