Press Statement: Invasion of Air Nigeria office by FIRS
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) stormed Air Nigeria office on
Monday, 18 June 2012, with mobile policemen armed with guns to demand
for past taxes allegedly owed during the period when Mr. Richard Branson
of Virgin Atlantic was running Virgin Nigeria, now Air Nigeria. These
taxes have been in dispute and needed to be reconciled and agreed upon.
The FIRS is however not patient with such reconciliations but resorted to a military approach in a civilian era.
Air Nigeria is not indebted to the government on current taxes since the
acquisition of the airline by Dr. Jimoh Ibrahim, OFR. We therefore
consider the FIRS action as uncivilized and condemnable.
We are at a loss as to what the FIRS has been doing for the past 8 years
without collecting the taxes from previous management of the airline.
We assure the general public that Air Nigeria cannot be intimidated by
this crude approach and will not be ready to give bribe to any person no
matter how highly placed. We will brief the general public as the issue
progresses.
It should be noted that since the commencement of international
operations on the Lagos – London route, Air Nigeria has become the
object of an orchestrated attacks that show clearly that this is a case
of the voice of Jacob and the hand of Esau. In following the external
influence, local staff of the airline went on strike in May for May
salary which the management has resolved amicably.
As the airline was coming out of that, the news of it being grounded by
the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) infiltrated town. Again, as
the airline was coming out of this with a clean bill of health, barely
two days after, the airline is yet invaded in a military manner. We
suspect that one other line of action will be coming in the coming week
to further attempt to damage us in the public eye; but we assure the
instigator of such uncivilized approach that Air Nigeria will not
compromise its corporate values and development strategy.
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