The Nigerian Civil Service Union has claimed that the Federal Inland Revenue Service ( FIRS ) has been put under financial duress as a result of the secret recruitment of over 2,000 staff.

After the secret involvement of the staff members inside 18 months, the Union found it difficult for the agency to pay salaries at some point in the course of this year.

NCSU requested an end to the re-engagement of retired directors and other staff categories in its letter of 21 June 2021 to the FIRS Chairman, Muhammad Nami.

The signature was made by the President, Idris Abdulrahman, NCSU-FIRS Unit, and the Secretary, Idowu Jimoh, respectively, of the document entitled ’21 days’ of FIRS Management.

The document was copied to the Minister of Finance, the FIRS Board Secretariat, the Nigerian Labor Congress, Nigerian Civil Service Union, NCSU and FIRS workers.

The letter reads in part: “We request the immediate halt of re-engagement of retired directors and other categories of workers, in conformity with current rules/protocols on recruitment and career progression. We have seen that paying wages in due time was an issue sometime around 2021, following a record period of less than 18 months of discreet recruiting of over 2,000 people.

The Union ascribed the declining income collection in the country to “the Federal Inland Revenue Service’s early application for tax pro-max.”

It indicated that the execution of collections had detrimental consequences, which should have been high from an examination of previous data in June/July.

While the Union lauded the application enabling the registration, submission and payment of taxes and the automated credit of withholding tax and other tax payer accounts credits, the date of implementation which it claimed corresponded with the peak tax collection period of FIRS was not met.

Consequently, the Union recommends to apply in phases and request that taxpayers are permitted to file both manually and online.

The NCSU also provided the management with a 21-day finale to fulfill its different requests, including paying a general bonus to collect 98.6 per cent of the 2020 income objective.

However, the FIRS spokesperson, Abdullahi Sumaila, refuted that the FIRS found it very hard to pay wages and added that the agency paid wages as and when necessary.

“If there was hidden recruitment that is not true, you would have seen demonstrations. All I know is that they pay as and when they owe them,” he added.