Don advocates govts’ collaboration in revenue drive, infrastructure devt in Abia

A professor of Finance at Rhema University, Aba, Abia State, Prof. Udochukwu Godfrey Ogbonna, has advocated a synergy among the various levels of government, particularly the states and local councils, in revenue collection and administration for even development. To make this work, he said states and their councils should merge revenue administration, allowing one level to manage/administer it, ensuring that each arm of government gets its due revenue in real-time online.

Speaking while delivering the second inaugural lecture of the university entitled, ‘Infrastructural Development and Improved Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in Nigeria: The Buddy-Buddy Companion,’ Prof. Ogbonna said that the more infrastructure the country develops, the more revenue it can generate.

The don, who was re-appointed by Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, as the Executive Chairman of the state’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS), said that his inaugural lecture “shows the relevance of the results of the empirical exposition for the fiscal policy formulation as it forms the basis for tax bodies and related agencies to consider the IGR threshold for Nigeria in the process of targeting adequate Infrastructural Development (ID).”

For the country to raise its revenue generation capacity, he urged the government to allocate more funds for infrastructural development, saying that the more infrastructures the government develops, the more people would be encouraged to pay taxes. He added that automation of revenue generation and collection processes, motivation by training, retraining and rewarding of staff of revenue agencies play key roles in increasing revenue generation.

Prof. Ogbonna called for regular review of tax policies and tax administration strategies, pointing out that capacity development in the tax system will positively impact economic growth and, by extension, the country’s infrastructural development.

He said: “The government should ensure that ID is up to standard by deploying well constituted and non-compromising monitoring group to ensure that the work done is according to specification.”