By Marie-Therese Nanlong

The intensified efforts of the Plateau State Government to improve its Internally Generated Revenue, IGR has yielded positive results as the State’s Board of Internal Revenue Service has between January and July, raised N10.7bn.

Lalong

This is an improvement as the Board collected a total of N12bn for the year 2018 and the Chairman, Dashe Arlat was optimistic more avenue would be explored to get additional revenue for the State in the remaining months and beyond.

Speaking with Vanguard shortly after the State Governor, Simon Lalong swore in the Secretary to the State Government and his Chief of Staff at the Government in Jos, Arlat disclosed plans are underway to look into the transport subsector of the State, build parks and coordinate the activities of trucks and luxury buses for revenue collection.

Nigerian Army says will establish zoos, parks in cantonments nationwide(Opens in a new browser tab)

His words, “We have made tremendous efforts in raising our IGR and have recorded geometric increase from January to July; I call it rocket speed in revenue drive. For that period, we have recorded N10.7bn already and it came through a lot of efforts. We now meet the tax payers at their doorsteps, not waiting for them to come to us as it used to be. We have also recovered a backlog of revenue not remitted by tax audits. There have been a lot of payments coming in through recovery.

“We are meeting with the tertiary institutions, JMDB, Ministries of Agriculture, Transport, Lands and Survey and others so that we collaborate. There are a lot of gaps that are there and we know that we are not yet able to tap them especially in the transport sector of the economy. There are areas there that many of the owners of commercial transports are not on our searchlight, the drivers are not there and even penalties for offenders on the road.

“People park anyhow in the town, indiscipline on the road, we are trying to look at those, we have met with the enforcers like the Federal Road Safety Corps and VIO to ensure that everywhere is orderly and by that, any defaulter would be a revenue base for us. It may interest you to know that 80% of houses in Jos are not numbered, we don’t even have street names for the streets, we are embarking on streets naming and numbering of houses to ensure that the pay the ground rent adequately.”

Speaking on how the plan would work, he added, “The trucks that come in and out of Jos, luxury buses that come in and out of Jos, we discovered that they don’t have parks for us to be able to get revenue. People turn the frontage of their homes to parks, most of the luxury buses going to Lagos and the Eastern part of Nigeria, they don’t have parks that government can hold unto that yes, you have to park here and pay us revenue. We are working on creating parks for them through the Ministry of Transport to ensure that there are parks especially for the trucks which are causing menace to other road users.

INSECURITY: Masari dialogues with bandits today(Opens in a new browser tab)

“The drivers park, taking over one lane of the road completely, causing accidents, we have already secure places; the former JIB, there is a very large parking space there. We are removing the trucks to those places, we have met with their union and they have agreed because they have already seen the need for that.

“Government is also having plan to have some spaces in the outlets like Mararaba Ja’ama, Zaria road, Bauchi road to get parking spaces for the trucks so that anytime they come in, they offload their goods and go and park there. If it is taking them some days to be here, they should be able to go and park at the spaces created for them.

For us, it will be revenue because as you move in there, you have to pay, as you are moving out, you have to pay. This will also make us to know the taxable people and the owners of even those trucks, if they are staying in Plateau, then we collect the income tax from them; those are some of the strategies we have.”

Vanguard