Opinion

"As a villager, I loathed paying taxes, or what they called revenue, in our weekly open air market," said Maitabo, the livestock trader who is now an industrialist in the big city where he established factories that turned out a basket of consumer goods, including polished rice. He said he spent the first 40 years of his life in his native village without electricity. There was no smooth, all-season motorable road to his village either. The only school in the district was in Alkarya, the district headquarters of his Karkara collection of hamlets, tiny villages, and homesteads. Maitabo said he…

It was Holly Black who said, "We don't need to be good. But let's try to be fair". Since the beginning of the current political dispensation in 1999, there is arguably any region that has been unfairly treated like the South East region of the country. It has again resonated with an age-long animosity, strife and suspicion, leading to a heightened campaign for self-determination and balkanisation in sheer contrast to the dreams of our founding fathers. Apart from being the only zone that has not produced an elected president since Independence in 1960, South East has in what some persons…

TAXES AS KEY TO NIGERIA'S ECONOMIC AND INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT  BY MUSA ILALLAH EMEKA ANYAOKU STREET, ABUJA  musahk123@yahoo.com  To begin this discussion,  it is imperative that we attempt to understand what taxes are all about. Taxation is defined as the imposition of compulsory levies on individuals or entities by governments across the world. Taxation is used primarily to raise revenue to finance government expenditures among other reasons. The Nigerian government is primarily reliant on taxes as they are a significant source of revenue and a major source of income to the government to discharge its responsibilities. No one doubts the fact…

Revenue Collection as a Strategic, Effective Tool to Restructure Nigeria by MUSA ILALLAH Acronymed “FIRS”, the Federal Inland Revenue Service has stood out since its rebirth in 2019 under the leadership of its Executive Chairman, Muhammad Mamman Nami as one more agency of government working hard for the benefit of all Nigerians. Indeed FIRS broke the jinx and did wonders for the country by raising the revenue collection bar every year since his coming on board. In 2021, the FIRS Chairman told Nigerians that the service collected N6.405 trillion in tax revenue for the year 2021, surpassing its target by…

When the music is good to our ears, we dance. And if we cannot dance, then we clap. Or we do both! This piece is not to sing the praises of a government agency without rhyme or reason. It is a fact based opinion piece on the historic feat of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in recording its highest ever tax collection of N10.1 trillion in a single year. The first indication that FIRS could cross the N10 trillion mark came in September last year when it collected N7.5 trillion in tax in nine months to surpass its entire…

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), government's agency responsible for assessing, collecting and accounting for tax and other revenues accruing to the Federal Government of Nigeria, have been recording tremendous successes and living up to it's mandate especially under the leadership of the Executive Chairman, Muhammad Nami. Prior to the present leadership, the FIRS was seen to be limited in capacity as it could not efficiently facilitate an effective tax collection system through bringing more tax paying entities into the national tax net. And this reflected in low revenue generation for the Federal Government year in, year out. But amazingly,…

Bishop Dr. Emeka Michael Nwankpa has reminded Abia Electorates of the need to go for only leaders who have good capabilities to manage humans and scarce resources of the state as only such men can turn around her condition from wasteful years of unprogressive existence to prudent years of coordinated and promising development as will be experienced in Abia state under the watch of the maverick clergyman who has taken the burden upon himself to fight for the masses. The ACCORD candidate for the 2023 gubernatorial race to the Lion House, Abia's seat of power, has repeatedly sounded this warning…

Many Nigerians hold the notion and presume wrongfully that every money invested in various development projects by the three tiers of government came from one loan or the other. The fact is that most of the money deployed to finance national development in this country was generated internally through the efforts of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). The rejuvenated FIRS is now turbocharged in its revenue drive to ensure that the country continues to finance the provision of transportation infrastructure, expansion in power generation, transmission and distribution and giving greater access to tertiary education to develop the necessary skilled…

Revenue generation is very critical to the survival of a country or otherwise all over the world. It is non-debatable that most poor countries of the world are poor because they have a problem of revenue. To fix the problem of revenue generation in most developing and emerging markets, the national and sub-national governments of such countries pay more than a passing interest in the operations and management of the countries' internal or inland revenue bureaus/services/boards which supervise revenue collection, aside from placing other programmes and policies to shore up their revenue base. In Nigeria, the Federal Inland Revenue Service(FIRS)…

The Federal Inland Revenue Service as we know it is the federal government agency charged with mobilizing revenues through tax collections across the length and breadth of Nigeria for the development of the country. At a time when the country is witnessing a significant reduction in oil revenues (Nigeria’s major revenue earner) as a result of several factors, such as low levels of oil production, oil theft and the global oil glut, the Buhari administration has had to devise creative ways of generating revenues for the execution of numerous government projects. With this policy direction and initiative, the Federal Inland…