Stakeholders in the country’s oil and gas sector have accused oil companies of deliberately hiding information about the various deals they undertake, with the intention to dodge relevant tax payments.
They alleged that some oil firms go abroad to sign deals on oil assets domiciled in Nigeria, and thus deny Nigeria the full details of the deals, which in turn limits the country’s ability to comprehensively probe when the need arises.
Such deals running into billions of naira, the stakeholders noted, were capable of lifting the country’s tax revenue base, and boosting the overall performance of the economy.
This worry was expressed by some advocacy groups, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the academia, media practitioners, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), among others.
Some of the stakeholders also alleged that Nigeria remained the only oil-producing country that does not know how much oil it produces in a day.
Commenting on the development, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, described the situation as pathetic, saying: “There is the need for us as a nation to go after these ‘big thieves’ that have put us where we are right now.
“The international oil companies (IOCs), and other oil companies that have defrauded the government in the area of taxes and non-disclosure of production figure should be investigated and brought to book.”
Falana had recently urged the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), to collaborate with NEITI to help the Federal Government recover unremitted funds from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
SERAP had decried the failure of the Federal Government to charge Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on $8 billion worth oil and gas assets sold between 2005 and 2015, which it said fuelled poverty and underdevelopment in the country.
It, therefore, called on the Nigerian authorities to urgently recover any possible past unpaid dues, and to enhance in the collection and estimation of Capital Gains Tax in the Nigerian oil sector.”
Source: Guardian
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