Nigeria: Corruption Gulps N440bn in Rivers

Nigeria: Corruption Gulps N440bn in Rivers

July 5, 2011 - Corruption gulpped over N440 billion in the Rivers State Internal Revenue Board between June, 1999 and July, 2008, investigation by AkanimoReports has revealed.

But the gushing swindling well dried up in August, 2008 when Governor Chibuike Amaechi's Special Adviser on Revenue Generation, Chief Nwankwo Nwankwo, was deployed to the board to shore up the state's internal revenue base.

The state is currently realising on the average, N5.00 billion per month as against the sum of N1.8 billion that was posted by the board.

Sources said the activities of some staff of the revenue board, were not in consonance with the administrative policy of the state government on revenue matters.

It was further gathered that the swindling ring was put out of business when all internally generated revenues were captured into the state coffers, thus leading to the development of “process flows”.

“This process brought to the barest minimum fraudulent practices at the revenue board. It affected some staff and their sponsoring cartel”, Chief Nwankwo said.

Before the new order, the 28 motor licencing offices in the state were said to be at the top of circulating fake motor registration/renewal receipts. Part of the process flows, going by AkanimoReports findings, was the introduction of automated motor registration which is satellite based and operated through banks.

As at April this year, it was gathered that government got an average of N20 million monthly on vehicle registration/renewal as against less than N1.00 million prior to August, 2008.

Confirming this, Chief Nwankwo said, “when I came on board, I discovered that more than 80 percent of the revenue generated from the state internal revenue board was transacted through cash payments to staff of the board. Most of them were working for themselves by operating parallel structures, issuing fake receipts and operating as tax agents to companies, and fake tax agents were also working in collaboration with the staff.

“Fraudulent practices were the order of the day. I immediately advised and got approval for genuine payment of revenue to recognised/approved 22 revenue collecting banks in the state through pay-direct system. This automatically resulted to rapid increase in the state internally generated revenue”.

In the mean time, there is jubilation in some circles in the revenue board following the dissolution of the Executive Council of the state, which affected Governor Amaechi's Special Advisers.

With the exit of Chief Nwankwo, who brought some reforms in the board, the cartel is alleged to be scheming to deactivate the process flows with a view to bringing back to action some of the loopholes in the board.

Analysts however, say the new measures helped the Amaechi administration to generate over N160 billion between August, 2008 and last April.

In spite of the reform efforts of government, sources say there are still sharp practices at the state internal revenue board.

ENDS

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