- As School feeding programme in 9 states gulps N3.7bn — Presidency
An Economic expert, Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Ministry of Finance must ensure that multinationals companies operating in the country pay their taxes in full.
Nnadozie, the Executive Secretary, African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), said this in Abuja on Sunday.
The expert was speaking on ways to address the menace of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) in the country.
According to him, illegal movement of cash out of the country, never to return is robbing Nigeria of the resources needed to achieve major development.
He said that as a matter of urgency, this act must be stopped if the country was to improve its domestic revenue to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
“In tackling IFFs, institutions such as the government, legislature, civil societies, judiciary and international organisations are strategic.
“In Nigeria, the front line institutions must be the Ministry of Finance and the CBN.
“The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is under the Federal Ministry of Finance, so the minister must sufficiently supervise FIRS to make sure that multinationals operating in the country pay their fair share of tax.
“The CBN must take responsibility, be well equipped to monitor money flows out of this country,” he said.
Nnadozie said that the country also needs to establish a Transfer Pricing Unit dedicated to understudy the various ways money was being trafficked out of the country.
“IFFs leaves the country and the continent through commercial transactions, corruption and crime.
“For crime, it could be through all kinds of trafficking activities and other illegal activities. For corruption, people can simply steal money that belongs to the country and go and put it in tax havens or secrecy jurisdiction.
“Also, multinational companies through their commercial activities, do this through transfer mispricing, tax avoidance, or profit shifting.
“If you look at the magnitude involved in these three categories, people will think that corruption will be the biggest source of IFFs, but it’s actually commercial activities.
“Nearly more than half of IFFs is through this Channel, therefore it is important to pay attention to the dealings of the multinationals who will do everything in the world to avoid paying their taxes,” he said.
Nnadozie called on the National Assembly to improve existing laws or draft new ones with stiffer sentences for any kind of tax offence .
He cited the case of Ethiopia, which had life sentence for tax avoidance.
He also urged the government to strengthen the judiciary as well as the Auditor-General to improve enforcement.
Nnadozie advised the government to invest in capacity building of its workers to boost their confidence in dealing with multinationals.
He said the multinationals had skilled, intelligent and well paid people working day and night to help them avoid tax, so the government must also improve staff welfare as well as training.
It will be recalled that in Africa, tax avoidance has been identified as one of the factors holding the continent backwards as it starves government of the necessary revenue it needs for development.
A report by the Former South African President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, who chairs a United Nations panel on IFFs, showed that Africa was being robbed of about 50 billion dollars annually.
Similarly, findings by Actionaid Nigeria shows that Nigeria is one of the worst hit countries, losing about N2.9 billion dollars, (N890.3 billion) annually.
In Nigeria, many multinational companies operating in the oil and gas, banking as well as communications sectors have been accused of transfer, mispricing, tax avoidance, or profit shifting.
In the meantime, the Presidency on Sunday said it has so far spent N3.7bn on the Homegrown School Feeding Programme, which is one of the components of the present administration’s Social Investment Programme.
It said the sum had been released to nine out of the 36 states of the federation for the feeding of about 1.3million pupils in the states.
The Senior Special Assistant to the acting President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, disclosed this in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja.
A total of N500bn was allocated to the SIP in the 2016 budget while the same amount had been provided for it in the yet-to-be signed 2017 Appropriation Bill.
The feeding programme is projected to feed over three million pupils this year.
Akande named the nine benefitting states as Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta and Abia.
He said the states had, at the last count, received various sums in tranches while 14, 574 cooks had been engaged in the communities where the schools were located.
He added that the money was paid directly from the Federal Government’s coffers to the cooks with a slight variation in Osun State, where some of the food items like eggs were bought centrally by an aggregator.
He said, “The overall payments to each of the nine states and the breakdown figures of how many children have been fed so far are as follows:
“Anambra State got a total of N693,013,300 in eight tranches of N53,684,400, N67,462,500, N68,570,600, N70,387,100, N70,950,600, N71,480,500, N145, 238, 800 and N145, 238, 800, respectively while a total of 103,742 children have been fed so far.
“The total release for Enugu State is N419,427,200 in six tranches of N67,244,800, N67,244,800, N69,570,900, N69,570,900, N69,570,700 and N76,225,100 respectively while 108,898 school children have so far been fed.
“For Oyo State, a total of N414,708,700 have been released for the feeding of 107,983 pupils in six tranches of N72, 288,300, N66, 622, 500, N66,736,600, N66,736,600, N66,736,600 and N 75,588,100 respectively.
“In Osun State, N767,483,244 was released in eight tranches of N58,299,130, N62,089,580, N49,671,664, N62,089,580, N62,089,580, N49,217,310, N212,013,200 and N212,013,200 respectively for the feeding of 151,438 pupils.”
In the case of Ogun State, Akande disclosed that a total of N880,055,400 had been paid in seven tranches.
This, he said, comprised of N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900, N119,648,900 and N162,162,000 respectively while a total of 231,660 schoolchildren had been fed.
In Ebonyi State, he said N 344,633,100 had been paid in three tranches of N115,218,600, N115,218,600 and N114,195,900 respectively for the feeding of 163,137 school children
He said Zamfara, Delta and Abia states got a total of N188,001,100, N63,366,100, and N42,921,200 for the feeding of 268,573; 90,523 and 61,316 pupils respectively.
Akande said the last three states were the latest to join the programme.
Additional report from Citizen
