AKURE—ONDO state government yesterday explained the reasons behind the restructuring of its board of internal revenue, saying those found guilty of corrupt practices had been sacked.
The state board of internal Revenue has been bedeviled with large-scale fraud following which civil servants lobby to be posted to the board.
Speaking in Akure, the finance commissioner, Chief Tayo Alasoadura said that the board was, until the recent restructuring characterized by inefficiency, corruption, incompetent and unqualified personnel which culminated in the lackluster performance of the board.
This, according to him, necessitated the government to “carry out a comprehensive restructuring of the organization to make it more responsive to the aspirations of this administration".
He pointed out that the performance of the board between year 2001 and 2003 witnessed a systematic and alarming decline in revenue generation.
“The former staff who were alleged and found guilty of one malpractice or the other were dealt with in accordance with civil service rules and regulations and those found guilty had their services dispensed with.
“Thereafter, qualified professionals were recruited or redeployed from other arms of the public service. The board was re-invigorated through adequate funding, provision of office equipment and necessary logistic support.
“There is no gainsaying the fact that the restructuring exercise has started to yield the desired result as evidenced by our experience as at July this year.
“A total sum of N797 m was generated against the sum of N495 m realized by the board during the corresponding period in 2003”, Alasoadura declared.
The commissioner however said that by the time the restructuring had gone full cycle and the officials firmly grounded on their function, coupled with government programme for capacity building and computerization, the performance of the board would be better.
A brief analysis of the state's internally-generated revenue in the last three years shows that in the year 2001, N2m was generated; in 2002 N1.6b and in 2003 N1.4b while from January to July in 2004, N1.2b was generated.
The state government after the restructuring realized N2.3b as internally generated revenue between June 2003 and July 2004.
