Edo government says it received N547.9 billion from federation account, IGR, in seven years
Edo State Government said it had since 2008 to last June received the sum of N547,931,662,882,11 billion revenues from the Federation Account, Valued Added Tax and Internally Generated Revenue.
BusinessDay reports that this was the first time the state government would break its silence on the agitations by the people of the state especially members of the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party and civil societies to make public how much it had so far received as revenues from the Federal Allocation Account Committee, Valued Added tax, Internally Generated Revenue and other sources.
The state chairman of the PDP, Dan Orbih had recently in a press conference alleged that available records showed that the sum of N928bn accrued to the state in the past seven years but only N268bn could be accounted for in terms of projects execution and payment of salaries.
Orbih who also alleged that the state governor, Adams Oshiomhole had so far collected the sum of N42 billion as security votes, however urged the state government to return the balance of N660 billion of the sum that had so far received to the state coffers.
The executive chairman, Edo State Internal Revenue Service (EIRS), Oseni Elamah who disclosed the revenues that had so far accrued to the state coffers in the past seven years in Benin-City said the sum of N547,931,662,882,11 billion had been received by the state government.
Elamah disclosure was contained in a paper, titled,” Internally Generated Revenue” during a Colloquium with the theme, “The Edo Project: Defining the Issues and Addressing the Challenges Post 2016” to mark the seven anniversary of Adams Oshiomhole led government in Edo State.
He disclosed that the sum of N379,988,065,364,10 billion was received from the Federation Account between 2008 to June this year, N112, 651,660,769,45 billion from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from 2008 to October,2015 and N55,291,936,748,56 billion from the Valued added Tax (VAT) from 2008 to June, 2015 respectively.
The EIRS boss gave the breakdown of the annual total revenues receipts by the state in the past years to include, N42,779,581,480,96 billion in 2008,N51,393,578,181,44 billion in 2009, N58,363,866,284,00 billion in 2010.
Others are, N87,158,015,179,96 billion in 2011, N90,391,052,466,67 billion in 2012, N92,599,407,605,10 billion in 2013, N85,291,862,196,32 billion in 2014 and N39,954,229,487,66 billion in 2015 respectively.
Elamah, however added that the Joint Tax Board records ranked Edo State the fourth highest internally generating state with a total collection of N80,218,990,916,96 billion for the period of 2010 to 2014.
He said Edo state was behind Lagos state with the highest figure of N1,084,289,159,292,62 trillion, Rivers with N345,646,828,116,58 billion and Delta state with N199,431,764,901,08 billion.
He however posited that only about 165,486 people paid taxes out of the about 4,122,363 million population in the state and projected that by 2016 the tax base would be 600,000 people and the IGR profile expected to be N3 billion annually.
IDRIS UMAR MOMOH