Three persons, Ezubuche Paulinus, Tobias Ekwonwa and Ebenezer Okafor, are to remain in prison custody at the Afokang Prison, Calabar, on the orders of a Chief Magistrate in Cross River State.
Chief Magistrate Adomi E. Adomi of Magistrate Court 1, remanded the three for willfully and unlawfully conspiring to destroy a government seal at the Ikot Ishie market on the 12th of December, 2013.
Calitown.com sources say the three, broke the seal after staff of the Cross River State Internal Revenue Service had sealed off their shops for not paying tax. One IRS source told calitown.com that, “considering that this people had the mind to remove and destroy the seal, it was only normal that the law must be brought in”.
It is in the same vein that other sources within the tax agency have informed that acting Chairman of the IRS, Peter Oti, says the IRS is prepared to make real it threat not to condone tax defaulting while specifically advising that individuals pay their taxes and shy away from destroying padlocks and seals, put on tax defaulting businesses by the IRS.
Recall that in the last couple of weeks and across the entire state, most businesses have been under lock and key as the IRS has embarked on an aggressive tax drive to shore up the state’s internally generated revenue, IGR.
