Nigerian Concord Newspaper
Benue State Internal Revenue Service, BITS has always been a conduit pipe for politicians to steal money since it’s creation.
At the BIRS, it has always been the tradition that whoever that is the Executive Chairman will give funds to politicians , make some of their men consultants as they use to call them. They , consultants, however have no particular duty than to collect revenues on behalf of the agency and pocket same.
Another bad angle of the so-called BIRS Independent consultants is that a huge percentage of the revenues they collect on behalf of the Board still return to them and the greedy politicians in Benue state.
Also, whoever that finds him or herself on the exalted seat as chairman of the Board too also use these so-called consultants to divert the Board’s funds to his or her personal use. They are fond of employing their own people as consultants who steal money for them.
Some of these consultants are the ones creating illegal checking points in order to loot the Treasury of the BIRS.
Before the current chairman of the board, Emmanuel Agema came in, almost all those that had served as chairman of the agency were either sacked or asked to resign as a result of their corrupt acts. Their corrupt acts have eaten very deeply into the Treasury of the board, and this Agema is trying to correct.
Immediately Agema was appointed, he ensured that all the avenues with which the Treasury of BIRS was being looted were blocked. He has been doing this but not without some challenges and sabotage from those that feel uncomfortable with his operation stop corruption in BIRS.
He has been accused of decreasing the fortunes of the agency by those that were stealing government funds. The accusation was because he didn’t allow them to steal again.
Recall that Agema is a civil servant with many years experience in taxation and he understands how things are being done. He has crippled the operations of illegal checking points to some levels, and one expects the affected thieves to fight back.
On the issue of appointing consultants for the BIRS, Agema who had served several chairmen of the Board knows that the so-called consultants were doing nothing than stealing government revenues , and this made him to stop working with any consultant. Aren’t they expected to fight back by making false accusations against him? This has helped him to generate several hundreds million Naira for the state government monthly.
Before Agema came, vandals used to go scot free because they had the backing of some people in the government but immediately he came, he has clamped down on them. Now you can see that many of them had been arrested and prosecuted in courts. Won’t their backers fight back?
As parts of his plans to boost the revenue profile of the state government, Agema’s BIRS embarked on sensitization of traders in the state on the right Channels of payment of taxes. This he didn’t achieve without stepping on the toes of those that were looting the agency before his appointment. Won’t they fight back?
Before Agema came on board, POS operators in the state were sabotaging the economy of the state but that he has stopped. He has made sure that POS operators are now transparent and accountable. This didn’t go down well with the corrupt ones among them. They are behind the accusations being made against Agema that he is crumbling and collapsing the agency. Those behind the accusation know that it’s false. They just want to persecute the chairman because he had stopped how they were looting the Treasury.
Below are some of the achievements of Agema as the BIRS chairman:
1. Going by records on the platform of the National Bureau of Statistics((NBS)and Joint Tax Board, Agema’s leadership has made it possible for the revenue generation to increase by over 80%. This has been the largest in the history of the state.
2. Approval of Overhead to Directors, head of units, Area Tax Officers and Zonal Tax Officers for running of their respective offices and embarking on field work. This included their official cars.
3. He also recovered and repaired Vehicles for field work, these vehicles are fueled and sent out on weekly basis to enable staff embark on field work.Just today, BIRS Official Bus that travelled to Abuja returned with over 3000 plate numbers for the Benue People, tomorrow, more Staff will be sent on field work to Otukpo using BIRS Official vehicles.
3. Staff welfare and professionalism have also been his concern. He approved the training and retraining of many staff of the Service. Five Staffers of the Service were sent to the Joint Tax Board Training in Abuja which is the highest number ever sent for this training in the history of BIRS.
To be continued