Niger State Governor, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, has described as unacceptable, the N350 million monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) recorded by the state’s Board of Internal Revenue. This, he said, was against a monthly revenue target of N1 billion given to the board two years ago. He made this assertion at the inauguration of the cars and Information, Communication Technology (ICT) centre of the state Internal Revenue Board, yesterday, at the old secretariat, Minna.
The Governor said that the implication was that without the federal allocation, the state could not generate enough revenue to pay its workers, considering the fact that the state wage bill stands at over N1billion.
“Where you rely on federation account, people are not likely to ask questions about government finances and gave this as a reason why the people evade tax.
“So we are not satisfied with where we are; just N50 million improvement is not enough for us to clap our hand, the chairman of the board has the experience to do it,” he said.
Governor Aliyu pointed out that with direct taxing system, the citizenry would feel committed enough to hold their leaders accountable.
Aliyu also observed that the people take government expenditure process for granted because of the over dependence on federal allocation and because the money was not traceable to their pocket.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Board, Alhaji Suleiman Abdullahi Baddeggi, had said that he has improved on the revenue generation capacity of the state from the earlier N295 million monthly in 2011 to N350 million.