By Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
Kogi State Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello on Monday charged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to cooperate and collaborate with the management of the revenue board (KGIRS) to improve the Internally Generated Revenue of the state.
Governor Bello gave the charge during the internally generated revenue strategic workshop in government house, Lokoja with MDAs, organised by the management of KGIRS to chat a way forward for an improved revenue generation of the state.
The governor who emphasised on the need to block all leakages in order to harness the potentials abound in the revenue generation of the state, said government can not provided adequate security of life and property including the desired infrastructural development without an improve revenue generation to compliment the federal allocation to the state.
“We will soon start our second term that will kick off on the 27th of January, 2020. We are elected to serve the people through delivering of dividend of democracy and we can not do that without finance from revenue.”
“We are faced with a lot of security challenges , there are emerging threats from kidnappers, banditry among others and we need a lot of funds to take care of all these challenges.”
“We need the cooperation and understanding of MDAs in ensuring that we block all loop holes by strictly adhering to all the laws to drive all the revenue by expanding base to enable us generate enough income for the state so that we can satisfy our people in the area of infrastructural developments.”
He assured the people of qualitative education , health care, youth empowerment, payment of N30,000 minimum and provision basic social amenities among others in the state.
Governor Bello who promised to be transparent in spending every kobo accrued to the state, urged the ministry of finance to ensure prudence in the management of the resources of the state.
” Either government money, federal allocation internally generated revenue, grant or donations, no body can spend it without the approval by the authority saddled with that responsibility.”
“Every kobo generated you must be authorized to spend it and if you are spending it you must have value for such expenditure because if we take care and safeguard our one naira then our billions would be safeguarded”. He advised.
Presenting the recommendations of KGIRS towards an improved revenue generation to the governor for approval, the Chairman of the revenue service Mr. Aliyu Inda Salami stressed for an improved capacity delivering of MDAs in terms of personnel training , release of monthly impress and necessary working tools and interventions required from government to enhance the service delivery of MDAs in revenue generation of the state.
The Chairman also recommended that the management of Lokoja international market and other government owned markets be transfered to Kogi State Market Development Board for proper management and increase revenue generation without altering the ownership structure.
While seeking for approval that all revenue generated in the state should be paid to the automated KGIRS account , Mr Salami said that the recommendations if approved will go a long way in ensuring that MDAs in Kogi state do not only compete favourably with other states , but would surpass the performance of other states in revenue generation and efficient service delivery.
