Revenue lords building hotels, houses with state IGR — Lawmakers

The Anambra State House of Assembly Committee on Inter­nally Generated Reve­nue has observed that those it described as revenue lords are building hotels, houses and buying other personal prop­erties with the state internally generated revenues to the det­riment of government.

The committee made the ob­servation during budget bilat­eral discussions with officials from the Anambra State Inter­nal Revenue Service (AIRS) at the legislative complex in Awka.

Deputy chairman of the committee and member repre­senting Nnewi-North State con­stituency, Hon. Nonso Smart Okafor berated the manner in which revenues were being collected in the state.

Ok for, who presided over the budget discussions with officials of the state revenue agency, noted that revenue scavengers were everywhere across Anambra state.

He alleged that they molest and extort money from citizens on grounds of being authorised by government to unleash ter­ror and mayhem on the people.

The lawmaker maintained that the irony of the whole sit­uation was that the huge sums of revenue collected through exercises do not get into gov­ernment coffers instead they ended up in private accounts while the state is grossly short­changed.

He said, “There are a lot of cases where revenue scaven­gers chased motorists in the name of collecting revenue from the driver and the driv­er in a bid to avoid them kills someone.”

The IGR assembly commit­tee, however, assured the reve­nue agency of enacting legisla­tions that will put revenue lords in jail, adding that revenue col­lection in the state should be done in a more decent manner and not some atavistic manner.

The IGR assembly commit­tee was equally of the opinion that people should able to get corresponding services when they pay revenues, adding that the legislature will also assist to ensure the agency got more releases in the coming year to enable it perform with greater efficiency.

The committee also point­ed out that markets have been saturated with all manner of tickets and that some people claim to have authority letters from government to collect rev­enues whereas they did so for their personal accounts while pittances were remitted to gov­ernment.

(Daily Independent: Text excluding headline)

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