Yobe State government has emerged the fastest growing Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) State in Nigeria in the year 2019.
According to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics and authenticated by Alford Conferences Limited, Publishers of Revenue Magazine, the State generated N8.44 in 2019 as against the N4.38 billion generated in 2018.
The figure represents 92.70% beating Zamfara State and 10 other states that made the top twelve states out of the 36 including the FCT.
The Chairman and Publisher of Alford Conference Limited, Mr Federick Apeji while presenting an award of excellence to the Executive Chairman of Yobe State Internally Generated Revenue Alhaji Ali Usman Ahmad at a brief ceremony in his office in Damaturu noted that the performance of Yobe State in the revenue generation is impressive despite the security challenges faced by the state.
According to him, Yobe State which was at the bottom in IGR performance in 2018 has emerged one of the fastest-growing states in internally generated revenue (IGR) in Nigeria, based on the latest published figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
He noted that in the NBS annual report titled, “Internally Generated Revenue at State Level (Quarter 4 2019 & Full Year 2019)”, dated May 2020, Yobe State grew its IGR by 92.70% during the year under review, while Zamfara and Osun states grew theirs by 87.85% and 72.64%
respectively.
He explained that the trajectory of the reports by Nigerian States IGR Summit indicates that, among the top 12 fastest growing states in IGR last year, nine are in the North (Yobe, Zamfara, Benue, Adamawa, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, and Jigawa), while the rest are in the South (Osun, Enugu, and Anambra).
The award he observed is to drive a healthy competition among states and the FCT in the generation of IGR so as to improve the living condition of the citizenry
The activities he noted have the goodwill and support of appropriate agencies of government including the Joint Tax Board, Federal Inland Revenue Service, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Board of Internal Revenue of the 36 states, and it’s equivalent for the FCT among others.
In his remarks after receiving the award, the Permanent Secretary/ Executive Chairman of Yobe State Board of Internal Revenue; Alhaji Ali Usman Ahmed explained that the surge in 2019 of the state revenue was not “a rocket science but by putting heads together and bringing in new policies to prevent the ugly performance in 2018 to re-occur”.
He added that “the board widen its tax net and explore sectors such as education, communication, power, banking and other sectors that are salient to boosting the state revenue.
“We went into these sectors to claim what belonged to us that we have not been getting and we have recovered a lot,” he said.
He said the board dismantled the manual vehicle licensing and went digital and therefore shut down the fake registration outfits by some unscrupulous operators with the engagement of Autoreg consultancy company.
“Going forward, we will change all our sources of revenue collection to Electronic Revenue Collection and Accountability System (ECAS) to ensure effective collection and full remittance of revenue to the government coffers,” he said.
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