Immediate past Chairman of FIRS, Babatunde Fowler
By Ibrahim Mohammed
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has been in the news for some days now not really on issues relating to tax, but mischievous move of the Okere Samson –led FIRS Joint Union Council executives to mislead innocent staff and deceive unsuspecting members of the public through a Press Statement that the Coordinating- Director of the Service, Abiodun Aina who is acting pending the resumption of the new Executive Chairman of FIRS does not have the basic qualification/ requirement to be employed at FIRS.
Interestingly, Aina is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Associate member Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers and Fellow Member, Chartered Taxation Institute.
For those who know Aina’s profile, they might not be wrong to conclude that the Chairman of FIRS Joint Union Council and his team were either drunk while putting the Press Release together or they were probably under a spell and therefore didn’t know what they were putting on paper. For the benefit of the general public and those who might not know anything about Abiodun Aina, he holds a Masters Degree in Banking and Finance from the University of Lagos.
The man who is well known in the tax circle is a Council Member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN). Aina is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and a Tax Faculty member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.
It is also shocking and senseless to say someone who attained the position of a Deputy General Manager in a bank; someone who was a Dealing Clerk on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and later qualified as a Stockbroker is not qualified to work at FIRS.
Not only did Aina worked at the prestigious KPMG, where he left as Audit Senior, at a point in his career, he was the pioneer Assistant Chief Dealer of Associated Discount House Limited. He left the company as a member of the Executive Committee. Before joining FIRS, he was the founder of Abiodun Aina & Co, a firm of Chartered Accountants and Tax practitioners, where he served as the Managing Partner.
Abiodun Aina who is a member of the Sub- Committee on Taxation of Extractive Industries of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Cooperation in International Tax Matter has been the Coordinating Director Domestic Taxes Group of FIRS since 2017, therefore, I cannot understand while the union is just waking up to say that someone who has this broad experience in the financial circle is not qualified to work at FIRS.
What one could conclude is that the executives of the union are being sponsored by the some ill-informed persons within or outside the service. My take is that the executives and their sponsors should find better things to do, after all, the new Chairman of FIRS, Muhammad Nami will resume any moment from now.
Ibrahim writes from Kano
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