OGHA Ready To Support OGIRS On Efforts Towards Boosting State’s IGR

ABEOKUTA – The Ogun State House of Assembly (OGHA) has said it would support any efforts geared towards boosting revenue generation drive in the state to enable the government deliver on its campaign promises for citizens to benefit from the dividends of democracy.

The Chairman, House Committee on Finance and Appropriation, Hon. Olakunle Sobukanla said this while appraising the performance of the Ogun State Internal Revenue Service (OGIRS) in the first half of the year, in the State House of Assembly Complex in Abeokuta.

According to a statement signed by OGIRS’s Press Officer, Mrs. Abolanle Ogunlami, Hon. Sobukanla said, as an agency that generates major percentage of the state’s revenue, there was need to look beyond the normal ways of doing things and tapped into other viable areas that would boost the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) as this would enable the government carry out its responsibilities to the citizens.

He therefore charged the agency to consider efforts towards boosting state’s IGR as priority that must be pursued vigorously as nothing could be achieved by the government without revenue.

The head, OGIRS, Mr Adekunle Adeosun while responding, disclosed that, most of the plans to jack up revenue could not be operational without a law to back it, and an amendment law towards boosting the state’s IGR in the areas of Pools, Betting and Lotteries was already in the pipeline and would soon be presented to the house for approval.

He said plans were already on-going to shoot up the IGR in the remaining part of the year as the previous months’ performance was highly affected by the impacts of Covid-19 on taxpayers.

According to him, the half of the year collection of N15.112bn representing 11.16% out of the projected amount of N80bn as revenue in year 2020 budget showed a negative variance when compared with over N16.8bn generated in corresponding period in year 2019.

Mr Adeosun listed the agency’s plans to achieve better performance to include, the tax relief given to payers, strict implementation guidelines on Covid-19 reliefs to encourage voluntary compliance, opening of additional road taxes desks in strategic locations in the border areas, co-location arrangement to increase number of channels, deployment of technology to ease tax compliant like, e-filling, e-assessment, payment through USSD platform and use of social platforms for information dissemination.
Present at the presentation were, the two Special Advisers to the Governor on Revenue, Mr Jide Sanwo and Mr Adegbenga Adeshina.