Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun state has declared that Osun state must raise the internally generated revenue from an average of N500 million monthly to an average of N4.1 billion with a balance of N5.9 billion from the federation accounts and other receipts if the State must survive economically and further build on the established infrastructure.
Speaking at the Royal Park Hotel, Iloko-Ijesa while declaring open a 5-day Envisioning/Capacity Building Workshop based on 10-Years State Development Plan organized by the State Ministry of Economic Planning, Budget and Development, Governor Aregbesola urged
the Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) to work hard and raise the revenue of the State for the betterment of the State’s economy.
He also called on the people of the State to begin to look inward and imbibe the culture of being truthful to their civic responsibilities of paying taxes to coffers of government.
The governor said, “In your course of planning in respect of this workshop, Osun must at least target 10billion IGR in the next ten years. Osun must earn before the expiration of this administration at least N4.1billion as monthly IGR, it is not as difficult as we feel but we must apply our senses to it.
“If we really want to build a prosperous state as we aspired, thus, we must pay our taxes, God doesn’t support idleness, laziness and indolence, so we must work to meet our personal needs and give to government what it due to it.
“So, we must also use the opportunity of this gathering to develop and provide to our state, a development agenda that will make it virile, viable and successful state in Nigeria.
“If Lagos earned N503.7 billion in 2017 as Internally Generated Revenue, as being claimed by its government. It means that Lagos generated N41.7 billion for every month of the twelve months of 2017, therefore, we must struggle to get IGR capacity of 4.1 billion which is ten percent of what Lagos generates every month before we exit.”
BOLA BAMIGBOLA, Osogbo
