Blazing Twitter row between Nigeria's post and tax bodies

Two Nigerian government agencies went at each other on Twitter over a revenue collection dispute.

The Nigeria Postal Service (Nipost) and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (Firs) used their respective Twitter accounts to call each other out over who should be responsible for collecting stamp duties.

It all began with a tweet on Sunday by the Nipost chairwoman, Maimuna Abubakar, accusing Firs of "stealing the mandate" of her agency and calling on Nigerians to ensure that Nipost gets justice.

She said Firs, which is responsible for collecting and accounting for tax belonging to the federal government, had begun printing stamps rather that buying them from Nipost.

It was an angry Firs that responded on Tuesday with its own series of tweets, saying that it had the power to collect stamp duties and not Nipost.

The agency described the Nipost claim as "preposterous" and "great disservice to the government and people of Nigeria".

Determined to have the last word on the squabble, Nipost waded back in but from its central account this time, citing an internal government memo from 2006 that recognised the agency as the sole collector of stamp duty.

Its chairwoman, Mr Abubakar, followed up with a further series of tweets on Tuesday, backed with sections of the law to support her position.

Nigerians have found the spectacle amusing, wondering why both agencies have not explored internal channels to settle the dispute.

But this isn't the first time Nigerian government officials have engaged in a Twitter spat.

In June, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the head of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (Nidcom) and the Minister of Communications and Digital, Isa Pantami, squabbled over an office space via Twitter which then degenerated into name-calling.

This article originally appeared on BBC News

Photo: Firs/Twitter