The Federal Government has said that it has not stopped the NNPCL’s tax credit scheme that is used for funding critical infrastructural projects in the country. This was as the government also threatened that it would terminate all contracts awarded to contractors who have failed to meet specifications in the East-West road project. The Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, spoke during a 3-day inspection tour of the Ahoada and Eleme sections of the East West road as well as the Port Harcourt – Enugu express road. Umahi warned that the FG would not only sack non performing contractors, but would go after them in recovering funds already paid to them for the job.
Umahi noted that President Ahmed Tinubu has approved the revision of ongoing projects considering the current realities in the country, clarifying that the President never halted the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, tax credit scheme used in funding critical infrastructure across the country. He said “In the week ahead we are going to terminate a number of the projects that are not performing, we have agreed that we should terminate some projects and go after them to recover our money, so we are going to be dead serious. We had a meeting with NNPCL yesterday and the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue on the continuity of this tax credit of NNPCL and it is very obvious and we’ve said it that the president never stopped any of the NNPCL tax credit.
“In fact he has also based on force majeure given approval that we can review the projects, because basically the projects, the tripartite agreement was that the projects would not be varied but because of what has happened of late in the country, we are bound to review it and we’ve started reviewing it and we’ve reviewed this one (East West road), fortunately for us the contract of this one has not increased even though we have resigned it.”
