Gov. Otti Laments Poor IGR Profile

Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti, has said that the state is not doing well on Internally Generated Revenue, stressing that Abia needs to put in place an efficient and transparent revenue collection system.

He tasked revenue generation officials to put on their thinking caps and devise strategies to improve the State’s IGR collection system.

Otti, who gave the charge at a 2 -day revenue retreat organized by the State government for heads of revenue-generating agencies as well as Directors of Finance of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, stated that the lofty objectives of his administration cannot be achieved if it lacks funds to accomplish them.

He urged the revenue officials to come up with modest strategies that would shore up the IGR profile of the state where the government can depend less on handouts from federal allocations.

Earlier, Chairman, Abia State Board of Internal Revenue, Prof. Udochukwu Ogbonna, who described revenue generation as key to the success of the government, explained that the essence of the retreat is to share ideas on issues of revenue generation, stressing that low knowledge of tax among the people and lack of training among revenue-generating staff are responsible for the low IGR of the State.