By Enyim Enyim
ONITSHA – Anambra State government last year lost N800 million to fake revenue collectors, the government consultant on internally generated revenue, IGR, Mr. Olisa Aniuno, has said.
Aniuno, who is the Managing Director of Olisa Warren Group, dropped the hint Monday while addressing reporters on the activities of his consultancy firm in generating revenue for government.
This came on the heels of the declaration of Commissioner for Environment, Dr. Michael Egbobike, that the Ministry had a target of N800 million IGR on sanitation levy for this year.
The Commissioner said the target for last year was N30 million, adding that following the sensitisation of and response by the people on the need for them to pay their sanitation levies, the Ministry decided to shoot up its target for the year to N800 million.
Anuino told journalists that before now, revenue collection on sanitation was bastardised as many fake revenue collectors flooded the streets and roads, collecting all forms of revenue on behalf of government without remitting same.
He said: “For us to make sure that we carry out our job effectively, we had to first of all fight those fraudsters who had been denying the state the revenue that should have gone into its purse by embarking on an enlightenment campaign telling the people that they should pay directly to the banks.”
He said the N800 million target was realisable if government could, within the next 90 days, ensure that defaulters were arrested and prosecuted.
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