The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has restated its commitment towards generating more revenue into government coffers that will meet its targeted revenue projection for the 2023 fiscal year.
FCT Permanent Secretary, Olusade Adesola, gave this assurance, during the first quarter Internally Generated Revenue Review meeting of Secretariats, Departments and Agencies (SDAs) of the FCT Administration at the FCDA Conference Hall, Central Business District, Abuja, over the weekend.
The Permanent Secretary, who chaired the meeting directed that all revenue-generating SDAs must sit up, saying the Administration has lots of responsibilities that must be undertaken, and it is not prepared to accept excuses from critical revenue agencies.
He noted that though, the general performance in the first quarter of 2023 which rose to 97.27 per cent is encouraging, more efforts need to be done and those agencies that have maintained persistently low performance must wake up to their respective responsibilities.
The Permanent Secretary hinted that the Administration would review some of its interventions in the Satellite towns to boost its revenue and enable the government to sustain sanitation and cleaning exercises in such areas.
According to him, it will not be tenable to use monies realized in other areas to fund refuse collections in the Satellite towns.
He said the FCT Administration proposed the sum N213,848,939,058.81 as Internally Generated Revenue for the 2023 fiscal year, and that no effort should be spared to realize the projected revenue, which the government needs to provide the required infrastructure and services to make Abuja the city of our dream.
His words: “There should be more aggression on the part of the revenue officers because they are the livewire of every system if the system would survive and progress”.
The Permanent Secretary enjoined the SDAs to embrace the slogan of: “Do not tell me why you failed but tell me how you managed to succeed”; adding, there is no room for failure.
Adesola directed that henceforth, there should be massive sensitization on how to pay for revenue, thereby, improving the revenue performance.
While commending the SDAs that have worked very hard to surpass their revenue targets, he urged them to sustain the tempo; stressing that hard work pays.
The Permanent Secretary said that SDAs should streamline the revenue activities to minimize unwanted distractions that often rear their ugly heads with other tiers of government.
“To address grey areas, expand the nets and improve collectable revenue, the FCT Administration will next month hold a stakeholders restoration retreat as the culmination of all prior efforts towards the harmonization of revenue and ease of doing business in the FCT at Akure, Ondo State.
“We have to up our game, money must be generated, people have to pay for services being rendered to them, that is the way a modern city is run,” the Permanent Secretary reiterated.
Adesola emphasized; “The commercial officers have the power of the law to collect revenue and they must sit up to use such powers judiciously because money is required to run any modern city. So, capture more to increase revenue as possible.”
The meeting witnessed a presentation by the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS) on the update of the ground rent portal.
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