KANO state National Sensitisation and Capacity-building training programme for Media Professionals on the Nigerian Tax Ecosystem organised by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in partnership with Afropolitan Media Limited took place on Thursday 6 April, 2023. With a call on the Media to rise up to their Professional responsibility.
The workshop, held at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre at the Farm Centre Kano, had in attendance practicing journalists led by the Chairman, NUJ Kano Council, Comrade Abbas Ibrahim.
The FIRS and Afropolitan Media Limited conceived the workshop in order to update the media on new developments in the Nigerian Tax System since the Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr. Muhammad Nami, took charge of the Service in December, 2019 following his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari in that year, so that the media can inform the nation, especially the taxpaying public, from a deeper position of knowledge of tax administration for overall nation-building.
The workshop was also designed to sensitise the media on new challenges posed by fresh developments to tax organisations in the country and worldwide, and how the Nami reforms at the FIRS have surmounted these fresh hurdles to the benefit of taxpayers in Nigeria and the nation.
The topic for the Kano workshop, “Understanding the Rudiments and Importance of Taxation in Nigeria” was presented in over two sessions of three modules by Dr. Zaharaddeen Salisu Maigoshi, of the Department of Accounting, Bayero, University, Kano and Fellow, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
Dr. Maigoshi took the topic “General Overview of the Nigerian Tax Ecosystem
” in the morning session, followed by a robust interactive session between the resource person and the journalists-participant who asked him several incisive questions based on the first module, their experiences as both taxpayers and as journalists whom the public interrogates on tax matters such as multiple taxation and how the three tiers of government spend tax revenue.