By Stanley Onyekwere
In furtherance to its ongoing effort towards ensuring efficiency in revenue collection process, the FCT Administration is intensifying fostering sustainable synergy among its revenue generating agencies.
This move is coming on the heels of the seemingly rush by land owners in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), to pay ground rent, following as the threat by the FCT Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike, to revoke land allocations belonging to those who are yet to pay ground rent.
Mandate Secretary of FCT Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership Secretariat, Barrister Charles Chinedu Elechi, disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja, when he paid an unscheduled visit to Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS), to ascertain the level of compliance and pace of work of AGIS staff.
Elechi noted that the collaboration drive has become necessary, in order to take pressure off AGIS staff, who work even outside working hours.
He said: “We came to urge you to continue to work hard, we know that the pressure, unnecessary pressure if you ask me, because the Minister’s view on some of these matters is, this because after this rush, we should device a means of continuously, but let’s not be fooled by it, those who want to rush come, and also those who want to run the tape out, those who say let’s wait and see what happen, they will be there.
“It’s to encourage you to go on and as much as possible, we spoke about this in the morning, to collaborate with outlets, just to take the pressure off, so you have sister agencies like IRS and other ones, but you have to have your eye on the fact that everybody who owes ground rent must people.
“When the period for payment expires what is most important to us going forward is not those who pay, it is those who refuse to pay, once you see those who refuse to pay, when the rush is over we will definitely, whoever wants to eat his cake and have it, because ground rent is rent to government, if tenants pay rack rent to landlords, landlords also have to pay ground rent to government.
“The Minister said as a tenant why should you wait till the landlord chases you to pay, you don’t wait for the landlord to start chasing you to pay rack rent, in the same way if you can not pay ground rent, stay away from the land.”
The Mandate Secretary also disclosed that at the appropriate time, a certain percentage of revenue generated in the FCT would be given back staff of its revenue generating agencies to motivate and encourage them to do more.
“I have come from several revenue backgrounds myself, we know that revenue generating agencies, if everybody is working in synergy, it’s going to be like you get ten or twenty percent of revenue generated.
“We are trying to fix a meeting with all revenue generating agencies, we will look at it, when a cow is producing milk, to keep milk in it, you nourish it or at some point it is going to run out of milk, these are all practical things, we will not achieve what we want if we don’t sit down and work with only one thing at the back of our mind, the revenue of the FCTA”, he stressed.
Responding on behalf of AGIS staff Deputy Director, Head of Administration, Bello Ishaq Mubi, promised to sustain the tempo, pace of the work.
Mubi said: “We have created a two hour window for civil servants who are beneficiaries of government houses, from the sales of government houses and the rest, after work, they come here, our staff are already on ground, they will not close until six o’clock virtually closing by seven, right from the start of the program.”
