South East business owners: Group cries out over freezing of accounts

The Coalition of South East Youth Leaders, COASEYL, has condemned in strong terms, alleged cases of freezing of accounts and business accounts belonging mostly to South East, contending that such an action runs counter to the spirit of the unity of the country.

The Group in a statement made available to newsmen regretted that such a selective measure should come at a time like this post-Covid-19 era when businesses are going down and governments trying inordinately hard to bail out some globally so that job losses, inflation, purchasing power decline would not attend this critical period.

The statement signed by the General President of the Organization Hon. Goodluck Ibem and Secretary General Comrade Kanice Igwe reads “COSEYL gathers with regret, the move by Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, which is not unconnected with freezing of certain accounts on the grounds of tax-related matters/offences.

Importers of ethanol pay excise duties and import duties which translates into double taxation even when it is not advisable to pay excise as an importer.

According to them ethanol is a raw material whose excise duty charge reflects on prices of goods with the poor consumer bearing the whole brunt.

It explained that the FIRS is by law duly mandated to see to the transaction of taxes and revenue all over the federation, and is not by law mandated to go about it selectively as may remind a certain section of the country of the civil war and the decades following – 1970s!

Furthermore, COSEYL alleged that in some cases, personal accounts of owners of frozen business accounts are blocked without any proof of infraction or non-compliance with the law and which paves this way, for the closure of private businesses and individuals account holders made to suffer deprivation.

The Group recalled that the South East does not boast more or much of federal presence unlike other geo-political zones and cities yet a city like Aba has today an edifice of the FIRS.

Saddened by this event, COSEYL forthrightly demands that such business and private accounts in the region be unfrozen without prejudice to the law even as it challenged FIRS to state which extant or relevant laws that empowers it to seize accounts in that manner.

“Today in the South East region there’s no single sea port working optimally even when ordinarily this should have been the case.

The Coalition wishes to remind the FIRS that the best it ought to be doing at a time like this is creating pro-poor and pro-people revenue policies so that small scale businesses and baby industries are protected and kept afloat”, the statement concluded.