The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) is set to generate over N213 billion Internally Generated Revenue this year.
FCTA, Permanent Secretary, Olusade Adesola, disclosed this over the weekend, during the first quarter Internally Generated Revenue Review meeting of the Administration’s Secretariats, Departments and Agencies (SDAs) at the FCDA Conference Hall, Central Business District, Abuja.
A statement issued over the weekend by the Director, Information and Communication, FCT, Muhammad Hazat Sule, has said.
According to the statement, the Permanent Secretary disclosed that the FCTA proposed the sum N213,848,939,058.81 as Internally Generated Revenue for the 2023 fiscal year, warning that no effort should be spared to realize the projected revenue needed to provide required infrastructure and services to make Abuja the city of our dream.
His words: “There should be more aggression on the part of the revenue officers because they are the livewire of every system, if the system would survive and progress”.
The Permanent Secretary enjoined the SDAs to embrace the slogan of: “Do not tell me why you failed but tell me how you managed to succeed”, adding that there was no room for failure.
Directing that there should be massive sensitization on the process of revenue payment to improve revenue performance, Adesola however commended SDAs that have worked very hard to surpass their revenue targets, even as he urged them to sustain the tempo, stressing that hard work pays.
The Permanent Secretary also charged the SDAs to streamline the revenue activities to minimize unwanted distractions that often rear its ugly heads with other tiers of government.
To address grey areas, expand the nets and improve collectable revenue, the FCT Administration will next month hold a Stakeholders Restoration Retreat as culmination of all prior efforts towards the harmonization of revenue and Ease of Doing Business in the FCT at Akure, Ondo State.
“We have to up our game, money must be generated, people have to pay for services being rendered to them, that is the way a modern city is run.”
Adesola said this and emphasized: “The Commercial Officers have the power of the law to collect revenue and they must sit up to use such powers judiciously, because money is required to run any modern city. So, capture more to increase revenue as possible.”
Adesola therefore directed all revenue generating SDAs to sit up, adding that “the Administration has lots of responsibilities that must be undertaken, and it was not prepared to accept excuses from critical revenue Agencies.
He however noted that though, the general performance in the first quarter of the 2023, which rose to 97.27 percent, was encouraging, more efforts needed to be done, especially warning those agencies that have maintained persistently low performance must wake up to their responsibilities.
The Permanent Secretary hinted that the Administration would review some its interventions in the Satellite Towns to boost its revenue so as to sustain environmental sanitation and cleaning exercises in such areas.
According to him, it would not be tenable to use funds realized in other areas to fund refuse collections in the Satellite Towns.
The meeting witnessed a presentation by the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS) on the update of Ground Rent portal.
