News
Corruption
Gulps N440 billion in Rivers
Corruption gulped over
N440 billion in the Rivers State Internal Revenue Board between
June, 1999 and July, 2008, Watchdogreporters has learnt.
But the gushing
swindling well dried up in August, 2008 when Governor Chibuike
Amaechi's Special Adviser on Revenue Generation, Chief Nwankwo
Nwankwo, was deployed to the board to shore up the state's
internal revenue base. The state is currently realising on the
average, N5.00 billion per month as against the sum of N1.8
billion that was posted by the board.
Sources said the
activities of some staff of the revenue board, were not in
consonance with the administrative policy of the state
government on revenue matters.
It was further gathered
that the swindling ring was put out of business when all
internally generated revenues were captured into the state
coffers, thus leading to the development of ''process flows''.
''This process brought to the barest minimum fraudulent
practices at the revenue board. It affected some staff and their
sponsoring cartel'', Chief Nwankwo said.
Before the new order,
the 28 motor licensing offices in the state were said to be at
the top of circulating fake motor registration/renewal receipts.
Part of the process flows, going by Watchdogreporters’ findings,
was the introduction of automated motor registration which is
satellite based and operated through banks.
As at April this year,
it was gathered that government got an average of N20 million
monthly on vehicle registration/renewal as against less than
N1.00 million prior to August, 2008.
Confirming this, Chief
Nwankwo said, ''when i came on board, l discovered that more
than 80 percent of the revenue generated from the state internal
revenue board was transacted through cash payments to staff of
the board. Most of them were working for themselves by operating
parallel structures, issuing fake receipts and operating as tax
agents to companies, and fake tax agents were also working in
collaboration with the staff.
''Fraudulent practices
were the order of the day. I immediately advised and got
approval for genuine payment of revenue to recognised/approved
22 revenue collecting banks in the state through pay-direct
system. This automatically resulted to rapid increase in the
state internally generated revenue''.
In the mean time, there
is jubilation in some circles in the revenue board following the
dissolution of the Executive Council of the state, which
affected Governor Amaechi's Special Advisers.
With the exit of Chief
Nwankwo, who brought some reforms in the board, the cartel is
alleged to be scheming to deactivate the process flows with a
view to bringing back to action some of the loopholes in the
board.
Analysts however, say
the new measures helped the Amaechi administration to generate
over N160 billion between August, 2008 and last April. In spite
of the reform efforts of government, sources say there are still
sharp practices at the state internal revenue board
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