Allocation Shortfall: Kano Establishes Six Courts to Check Leakages

Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano

The Kano State government has established six courts to ensure that tax defaulting companies, banks and MDAs were made to pay their revenues as and when due.

Chairman of the State Internal Revenue Service, AbduRazak Salihi, disclosed this while speaking reporters, saying, already the agency had received the full government blessings in the establishment of the courts but awaiting the state assembly.

He said the measure became necessary following the adoption of the Petroleum Industry Act PIA recommendations, resulting in the commercialisation of the NNPC, which in essence would reduce the federation allocations to states.

He said since 2015, the government of Abdullahi Ganduje, had initiated reforms that would help in the collection of more revenues for the state as well as stop wastages.

“Although, Lagos is 10 years ahead of us in Revenue reforms, leading them to today being the biggest Internally Generated Revenue earner, we are looking ahead of them with the adoption of serial strategies, so that at the end, we will have enough dependency,” he said.

The Chairman said one of the Reforms they considered and adopted, was the creation of a Data Center, which resulted in the creation of 30 offices across the state with each enumerating their tax collections to stop manual payments, so as to stop leakages.

Similarly, they created Quality Internally platforms to Streamline revenue collection and because Lagos has done the same with over 3,000 Staff covering the place, in Kano they have since directed for the employment of Graduates that would take care of the offices.

To that extent, the revenue service has created a monitoring and evaluation unit to ensure banks, industries and other private entities pay their taxes as and when due and make sure that defaults were stopped.