Kogi Revenue Service Cracks Down on Illegal Tax Collectors

Alhaji Sule Salihu Enehe, Executive Chairman of the Kogi State Internal Revenue Service (KGIRS), issues a decisive warning to illegal tax collectors within the state, signaling zero tolerance for their activities.

He said the service has put in place a joint security task force to clamp down on non-state actors masquerading as tax collectors, thereby constituting serious security threats.

Enehe disclosed this on Thursday in his office in Lokoja during a press briefing, describing the prevalence of illegal tax collectors in the revenue generation process as totally unacceptable.

He said that he had written to all security agencies to help the service enforce the drive toward clamping down on all illegal tax collectors in the state.

“It is only in Kogi state that somebody, an individual, can create a tollgate. The new law has criminalized that,” he said.

According to him, the security agencies had also realized that the illegal toll collectors are among those giving information to criminals, explaining that their removal, especially the produce taxes, would reduce the price of commodities and the attendant effect on the cost of living.

The executive chairman expressed optimism that the staff of the service would utilize their potential to drive and achieve the aims and objectives of sanitizing tax collection in the state.

He said in this regard that staff of the service who would drive the process were being motivated through training, due promotions, and other incentives.

On the revenue tax of the Service Enehe said that the Service generated N23 billion in 2023, adding that N30.4 billion had been projected for it in the 2024 budget of the state. He assured that the service would block all revenue leakages to meet the target.

Enehe told the journalists that the state now had a harmonization law, which criminalized multiple tax collection points.

“Not only that, the law, Amended Revenue Harmonization Law has criminalized collection of tolls,” he stressed.

The law, he added, had also empowered Service to take charge of the revenue collections in the state.