The Federal Capital Territory Inland Revenue Service known as FCT/IRS is a revenue collection agency established by an act of FCT to drive not only the revenue profile of the nations city, but ensured prompt collections of legitimate revenues and taxes from business conglomerates and entities operating within the seat of government.
Determined to achieve greater feats under the leadership of the Ag chairman of the Agency , Haruna Abdullahi, had embarked on not only numerous reforms , but embarked on orientation and reorientation of staff members with a view to meeting it’s 200 Billion naira target for the year 2022.
To kick the ground running , it had carried out familiarisation visits to high revenue agencies and states , so as to prepare it for the task ahead, of not only doubling its collections , but deploying the collection of revenues to offset pressing government responsibility that had doubled amidst economic recession and the unabated COVID pandemic, that ad ravaged the globe , with Nigeria not an exception.
This had led the internal revenue service to Federal Inland Revenue Service FIRS, the main revenue collection agency of Nigeria, as well as Lagos State among many other states of Nigeria.
Since Lagos State was the past seat of government and still maintained the highest lead in revenue collection, with as much as 50B monthly down from 20B in 2015, the need to understudy and embarked on visit to the state cannot be overemphasized.
Occupying the same status in the current dispensation, FCT/IRS management also underwent studies of Lagos revenue collections, so as to assist the new capital city in it’s quest to address huge revenue gaps in the capital city.
The service determination to achieve it’s targets of 200B in 2022, also carried out seamless internal and external reforms to address pilfering of revenue collected and gaps in it’s activities, as it migrated from analogue collection of its revenues to online format, to address sharp practices, reduce human interferences in it’s activities.
The Haruna Abdullahi led FCT/IRS also carried out a wholistic awareness and orientation with stakeholders and professional bodies involved not only in remittances of collectible revenues, but payment on behalf of clients across the territory, so as to have or create an enabling environment for continuous synergy.
The series of audience, attention and visits to professional bodies like the ICAN,ANAN, CITN among many other professionals had improved drastically revenue collections in the FCT in recent times.
This is different from series of collaborations, awareness, and synergy with relevant government agencies to address frequent sharp practices, forgery, tax compliance and evasion of tax payments by many entities operating in the Federal Capital Territory FCT.
The ongoing orientation and reorientation of staffers of the agency through trainings, seminars, workshops, talkshops, symposiums and motivation had placed the new FCT/ IRS into meeting on its targets of 200B in 2022, but robust leadership in the service among many others towards surpassing it’s targets few weeks into the end of the third quarter of the year.
With the introduction of major reforms, monitoring and enforcement being carried by the current leadership under Haruna Abdullahi in the current acting capacity, no doubt when confirmed as the substantive chairman will transform the entire FCT revenue collection agency to another finance giant and hub, to be deployed in meeting the ever growing requests of renovation, development of decaying infrastructures, social services and invention of other developmental programs in the Federal Capital Territory FCT.
ABUBAKAR YUSUF, A Public Affairs Analyst From Abuja, writes from Abuja,He can be reached via: abubakar3@,Gmail.com.
