USAID S2S Activity:Gombe IRS Receives Technical Assistance on Development of IGR ICT Strategy
The State Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness Activity supported by the United States Agency for International Development, has offered technical assistance to Gombe State Internal Revenue Service on Internally Generated Revenue Information and Communication Technology Strategy.
The technical assistance which lasted for four days, commenced with a plenary session held at the conference hall of the GIRS and had staff from various departments in attendance where the DAI consultant Dr Ike Obihara, highlighted on the importance of ICT in taxation.
Obihara in an interview with The PERISCOPE NIGERIA, explained that the technical session is to study the IT capacity of the Gombe State Internal Revenue Service to deliver an improved and increased internally generated revenue
“In order to improve,we want to see where they are in terms of IT and where they are in terms of best practice and how we can enhance those practices so that there is an increase in the amount of revenue collected by the state,” Obihara said.
On what is expected of participants, the consultant said, “Participants are giving us feedback to understand what we want to do, First we teach them what the possibilities are while,they tell us where they are in terms of collection and processes.The final stage is that we make recommendation for a five year plan to enable the state roll out step-by-step five years of improvement.”
He explained that what necessitated the technical assistance is the need to improve the revenue of the state and improve service delivery.
“The Purpose for taxation is so that government has money to develop, if the government does not have money they cannot pay salaries ,they cannot roll out projects and services on ,education, health care, communication, infrastructure, legal services and security.
“All these cost money,without money nothing can be done.So, money must be paid by people so that government has the money to develop the state. That is the purpose of taxation. So tax is necessary to raise money, tax is also necessary for repayment, its a cycle, you give out,you collect back.If government continues to give out money , without taking back,what we have is inflation,” Obihara explained.
The consultant said that if Nigeria has high inflation now, it is because there is no tax return and if the economy is bad is because taxes are not being paid .
“So enhancing tax collection, will save us from inflation,provide development and enable the economy to grow.What we want to do here is to improve Internal collection which in turn enable the government to function,” he added.
The Gombe S2S Activity
Public Finance Management Specialist Mr Oluwatosin Oke, said the technical session is an offshoot of some of the past S2S Activity in Gombe State.
He added that last year, the S2S activity supported the GIRS to develop a five year IGR Expansion Strategy that has nine strategic goals which are all intended to expand the IGR of the state .
Mr Oke said the IGR ICT Strategy would ensure that database of taxpayers are accurate and up-to-date leveraging ICT among other benefits.
“Why we are here is to gather information, we have deployed questionnaires to all departments and they have responded .So we are here to discuss further on the responses, to know the ICT needs of each department which will guide the recommendations of the strategy, ” Oke said.
He added that information received would provide useful resources to understand what is on ground, where the service wants to get to,the goal, the vision,the ICT needs that would better guide what kind of ICT strategy to use to get the goal it want to achieve.
