Date: 2019-10-08

The founding Chairman of the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service, Prof. Muritala Awodun, on Monday said the agency collected N85bn as internally generated revenue during his tenure, from 2016 to 2019.

He also said the state realised a total of N175bn as IGR from 1999 to 2019, adding that N90bn amounting to 51 per cent of the total collection was realised in 16 years, between 2000 and 2015.

Awodun, according to a statement, on the sidelines of his handover and public presentation of the new Chairman of KWIRS, Mrs Folashade Omoniyi, said N85bn collected in four years, during his tenure, amounted to 49 per cent of the total collection of N175bn in 20 years.

He said, "In 20 years of democratic governance since 1999, total IGR generated by Kwara State is approximately N175bn out of which N85bn (49 per cent) was generated in four years of KWIRS (2016-2019) and N90bn (51 per cent) in 16 years between 2000 and 2015.

"Moving from a paltry N600m monthly average IGR in 2015 to a monthly average of N1.45bn in 2016, N1.75bn in 2017, N1.93bn in 2018 and N2.6bn in 2019 may appear commendable.

"What the performance of the past four years have shown, particularly when compared to other states of the federation, cannot be but encouraging.

"For instance, with a N7.2bn IGR collection in 2015 that puts Kwara at 17th position of the 36 states of the federation, the improvement of IGR to N17.5bn in 2016 moved the position of Kwara State to 10th position in that year.

"Further improvement to N19.6bn in 2017 pushed the state further up to 9th position with the state sliding back to 10th position in 2018 due to the IGR figure of N23.1bn generated.

"On the IGR per capita, Kwara State moved from 27th position in 2015 to 6th position in 2016 and 5th position in 2017 and 2018 with IGR per capita figure of N5,404.00, N5,969.00 and N6,100.00 in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

"This is far above the national average of N3,395.00, N3,818.00 and N3,900.00 in the respective years." Awodun said KWIRS engaged diverse stakeholders, particularly the customer (tax payer)-based associations and groups, as the point of entry and contact with each of the organised segments.

According to him, using this approach made negotiations easier. He said that agreement reached could easily be implemented and followed up, giving sense of belonging to the tax payers.

He added that the professional and non-professional stakeholders' associations therefore became veritable partners in the agency's tax mobilisation drive.

He said KWIRS did not just identify the facilities required for the service to deliver on the customer expectations, but ensured that such physical, human, financial and technological resources were well deployed.