Kwara infrastructural projects get N13bn boost from revenue

KWARA State Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) has injected about N13.5 billion to the state’s special infrastructure development fund (IF-K) since the fund was inaugurated in September 2016.

Speaking with journalists in Ilorin on Wednesday on performance for the second quarter of 2018, chairman of the agency, Dr. Muritala Awodun, said that the evolution of IF-K had assisted the state in executing capital projects across the state.

He said the service now remits the sum of N530 million to the Fund every monthly, as against initial N500 monthly remittance.

“In 2015, there were over 60 projects abandoned across the state and there was no money but with the coming on board of the fund all the projects were completed, and by 2016, given the available scenario, government would not have been able to start any new project. However with the IF-K, government was able to start several new projects and most of them are still ongoing across the state,” he said.

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While giving a breakdown of the performance of the agency in the second quarter of this year, KWIRS boss said that the service generated a sum of N1.3 billion in April, N1.2 billion in May and N1.3 billion in June, making a total sum of N3.8 billion. He also said that with N6.44 billion collected in the first quarter, the agency had collected a total sum of N10. 32 billion into the state’s coffers in the first six months of this year.

The KWIRS boss, who acknowledged the influence of political environment on operations of the service, said that his team had put in place strategies to ensure the continued success of the service in coming years.

“In the second quarter, we started a process of obtaining international standard certification; the ISO in two major areas; quality management system and business continuity management. We are going to be the first revenue agency in Nigeria to do this and we expect that by the end of this quarter, we would have been certified.

“The essence of this is that whoever comes into the system would have a seamless process that does not depend on an individual to succeed,” he said.

He also revealed that the service has so far spent N52 million on various community impact projects, out of the N100 million budgeted for such projects this year.