Authority of the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) said it is set to compete with Lagos State’s revenue base which is the highest revenue-generating state in Nigeria with a figure of N267.2 billion, by ensuring a radical revenue drive in the territory.
The Administration which has the second highest Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of 69.1 billion, after Lagos state, said there is the need for an aggressive revenue drive in the FCT.
The FCT minister, Malam Muhammed Bello made this known during a workshop organised for FCTA Revenue Desk Officers with the theme, “Improving revenue generation for FCTA” in Abuja.
The minister who was represented by the FCTA Mandate Secretary in charge of Economic Planning, Revenue Generation, and Public-private partnership, Mr Lukman Dabiri Agboola, said the exercise of revenue diversification is a new beginning for the FCT administration.
He said that the era of dependence on oil or budget is over, vowing to activate the principles of revenue diversification in such a way that could put the FCT ahead of other states in IGR.
‘This is a new beginning for us in FCTA, this secretariat has come to stay. Presently all over the world, the dependence on oil and budget is coming to an end. The only way out for us is to build on our revenue base, budget is about procrastination because it is the money you do not have at hand. But revenue is the sure money we can always plan for,” he said.
The minister further explained that the workshop was a capacity-building programme to position the revenue staff and officers on the approach to getting revenue from various units.
“The revenue officers need to go out aggressively to get the revenue for the FCTA for everybody to be comfortable. Many states now boast of money from their revenue. Today, Lagos state depends solely on revenue collection, not on a budget. We have NEPAD and other international institutions for support, but the only way we can get them to come to us is if they have the assurance that we will pay the money back to them. If there is no way that we will pay the money back to them, they will not be there to give us any support or soft landing,” he said.
