By Matthew Denis
The Management of Kwara Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) has warned politicians against circulating fake news about the agency.
The Executive Chairman of the agency, Prof Muritala Awodun issued the warning while reacting to the baricaded of the Corporate Head Office of the Service by members of National Association of Kwara State Students (NAKSS), on Friday.
He said, “The management of the revenue house has decided to hold this briefing to clear the air on some misinformation and to express our displeasure over the unruly behaviour of the students.
“They were protesting over the suspension of payment of students’ bursary by the Kwara State Scholarship Board contrary to fabricated reports that they were protesting mismanagement of resources by the service.
“We have invited various media houses to address the incident and call the attention of all residents and citizens of Kwara State to the treacherous development concocted by some groups of people in the state in the last few days trying to turn the service into a political target.
“Categorically, KWIRS is an agency of the government established by law and saddled with the sole responsibility of generating revenue for the strategic development of Kwara State.
“This revenue is collected via several banks and remitted into the state’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) at the end of every month. The Service has no access to the TSA of the State Government and is not responsible for spending revenue generated.
“The Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General are responsible for disbursement of funds to all other ministries, agencies and parastatals in the state including the Kwara State Scholarship Board.
“We therefore urge the parties involved to direct their complaints to the appropriate authority or agency.”
Recall that the agency had called on the public to disregard the report on missing files as false without facts.
It stated that contrary to reports, all the agency’s documents and files are in place as against the false report circulated on various social media accounts that files and documents were missing from the service upon resumption right after the Presidential elections.
” We urged members of the public to disregard this unverified and baseless information as our offices were closed from Friday the 22nd of February till Sunday the 24th of February 2019,” the agency boss had said.
According him, KWIRS was the first state revenue service in the country to become ISO certified in both the Quality Management System (ISO 9001:2015) and Business Continuity Management System (ISO 22301:2012) and the main purpose of the latter is to ensure all documents and files within the service are securely backed up and available for retrieval in the event of a disruptive incident like fire, theft or natural disaster.
“Therefore it is not possible for any document or file to be removed completely from the service as it will have a backup copy in an offsite location,” he further said
He added that those rumors and actions were politically motivated and instigated. “We therefore enjoin all political parties in the state to desist from spreading fake news and try to confirm the authenticity of the information before disseminating it to the public or their supporters so as not to tarnish the good image of the agency and Kwara State.
“The service has performed incredibly well over the past three years setting itself as a trailblazer and model to be followed by other states after moving the state from 27th to 5th in the country in terms of IGR per capita performance and is fully committed to the continued development of Kwara State.
“The service also runs an open door policy and welcomes any party who has any inquiry to schedule a visit to our offices.”
