By Matthew Denis
The Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) has generated the sum of N16.52 billion between January to September, 2018.
From the breakdown, the revenue agency realised the sum of N6.44 billion in the first quarter, N3.88 billion was raked in for the second quarter and N6.2 billion in the third quarter of the year.
Recall that KWIRS generated a total sum of N19.94 billion for the state in 2017 and announced target of N38 billion for 2018 fiscal financial year.
Going by this, the revenue is expected to generate the sum of N21.48bn in the last quarter to meet up with its target.
The Executive Chairman of the agency, Dr. Muritala Awodun in a text message sent to our reporter on Thursday, revealed the total amount generated for the third quarter of the year.
In a text message sent to our reporter, he revealed the total amount collected as revenue for the third quarter of the year.
“We have collected a total sum of N6.2 billion in the third quarter of 2018,” the message read.
He had earlier stated during a media parley in August that N1.3 billion was generated in April while N1.2bn and N1.3 billion were raked in for the months of May and June respectively, totalling N3.88billion for the second quarter of 2018.
He said, “If these figures are put together it will amount to the sum of N10.32 billion for both first and second quarters representing the first half of the year.
On challenges, he said,” there are issues around the environment, especially political environment and any system or organisation/institution cannot operate outside the environment both political or socioeconomic, and technological environment as they are affected by its changes.”
The chairman stressed that as an institution of government saddled with the responsibility of revenue generation in the state they are conscious of the changes within the political environment and not taking it for granted.
According to him, the agency has come up with ideas of ensuring sustainability of the revenue service.
He said, “We have introduced several things which has to do with capacity development within the levels of staff in the service which was the design in accordance to our training programmes cutting across all cadres to operate within the norms of world standard.
“The agency within the second quarter of the year started processing International Standard Organisation (ISO) certification for management system and business continuity management system.
“We believe that if our operations are not standardised it will be difficult for sustainability. So we are doing our job to meet international standard.
“And we will be the first revenue service in Nigeria to be subjecting ourselves to international standard measurement.
“We believe that by the time this quarter is ending, we would have obtained the ISO9001 for policy management system and ISO2012 for business management system.
Awodun emphasised that the essence of the certification is to ensure that whoever is at the revenue service or taking over the operations would be guided by the ISO guidelines.
