Akwa Ibom government has denied receiving N7 billion monthly as tax from ExxonMobil, a company that has its operational base in the state.
The oil company was quoted as saying recently that it remits N7 billion to the state government monthly as PAYE. It had also disclosed that it had so far remitted N67 billion to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) between 2001 and 2020.
But in a statement by Linus Nkan, the commissioner for finance, the state government denied the payment and called it an ”erroneous publication by an online medium.
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”Government wishes to state that such information is misleading as ExxonMobil has never made such payment to the state government,’ it stated’
According to the commissioner, a call to the purported source of the false information indicates that at no time has the company made such claims.
“Government has therefore urged the reading public and the good people of the state to discountenance the misleading information noting that the administration of Governor Udom Emmanuel will continue to remain highly transparent and accountable to the people in all its financial matters.”
It did not however disclose how much the company pays month as PAYE with more than 70 percent of its are said to reside in the state
It urges the media “to cross-check information from the appropriate quarters before sending it out to the public in line with the ethics of the profession.”
