The administration of President Bola Tinubu will ensure that every kobo of the nation’s revenue counts for the Nigerian project.
The Special Adviser to the President on Revenue, Dr. Adelabu Adedeji, made this known in Abuja, at a Sensitization workshop on the published Guidelines for Private sector response to illicit Financial Flows vulnerabilities in Nigeria organized by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
Adedeji explained that, the President believed in fiscal discipline and would ensure judicious utilisation of the country’s revenue and resources.
He said, “The President believes in fiscal discipline which rests on the accurate prediction of revenue. If the government can’t count your money, the government can’t allocate it and if the government can’t allocate it, it can’t manage it. The administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will make every kobo of our revenue count.”
The special adviser pledged that the government would strengthen the country’s fight against illicit financial flows (IFFs).
He noted that the IFFs had significantly eroded domestic revenues and hampered government’s efforts to mobilize resources, thereby threatening economic stability and sustainable development.
“In Nigeria and across the African continent, we continue to suffer various forms of IFFs, including tax evasion and other harmful tax practices, the illegal export of foreign exchange, abusive transfer pricing, trade mispricing, mis-invoicing of services, illegal exploitation and under-invoicing of natural resources, organized crimes, and corruption,” he added.
He emphasised that stemming illicit financial flows would address its negative impact on global development agenda as well as governance challenge.
The special adviser commended the Chairman of the ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, for the successes so far recorded by the anti-corruption agency in the fight against IFFs.
The ICPC Chairman, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye noted that, IFFs was a drain on Nigeria’s potential revenue accretion and foreign exchange reserves.
This, according to him, has resulted in exchange rate depreciation, inflation and increase in cost of servicing external debts in addition to negatively impacting on the cost of imported goods like petroleum with its attendant radical consequences on daily livelihood experience of ordinary citizens.
On the way out of IFFs trap, the ICPC boss called for diverse measures to tackle the menace in all its forms and in order to improve Nigeria’s quest for domestic revenue increase relative to the size of her economy and in spite of the volatile global economic and financial system.
Owasanoye assured that the Commission would continue to focus attention on practical measures to enhance Nigeria’s ability to stem IFFs, reduce capital flight and enhance the country’s capacity for domestic resource mobilisation by identifying vulnerabilities and other weaknesses in the systems and processes of agencies and institutions within the public and private sector and advising reforms to mitigate losses.
He said, the sensitisation workshop was necessitated by the need to get the feedback of the private sector constituency on any possible challenges towards implementation of the recommendations in the guidelines.
The Programme Director (Africa) of Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), Mrs. Lola Adekanye, gave an overview of the published guidelines while the Chief Compliance Officer and Company Secretary of Oando Plc, Mrs. Ayotola Jagun outlined the private sector response to the guidelines.
Also speaking, Mrs Ayotola Ajagun from an oil company OANDO who presented the private sector feedback on the document, advocated for more ways of ease of doing business and, security for companies to promote businesses as well as training them on how to deal with IFF’s.
The “Guidelines for Private Sector Response to IFF Vulnerabilities in Nigeria” is published by the ICPC and it seeks to enable private sector practitioners better understand the phenomenon of IFFs and provides guidance to them on what to look out for and avoid in the course of their business transactions.
Olusola Akintonde
