Mr Okon Okon, Executive Chairman,Akwa Ibom Internal Revenue Service.
By Abasifreke Effiong
The Akwa Ibom Internal Revenue Service, AKIRS, has begun implementation of full autonomy which allows the agency to create and operate its own corporate governance structure independent of the State civil service.
The Executive Chairman of AKIRS, Mr Okon Okon disclosed at a press conference at the opening of 2021 Strategy Session for top management of the agency that AKIRS is now fully independent and autonomous.
“I am pleased to inform us that His Excellency, our dear Governor, Mr Udom Emmanuel has given the Akwa Ibom Internal Revenue Service approval to implement full autonomy inline with the State Revenue Administration Law 2016. Mind you, we had autonomy by the law establishing us, but we could not implement all the components of the autonomy.”
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“We have started implementation of full autonomy effective January 1, 2021.”
While thanking the Governor, Mr Udom Emmanuel, for giving the agency necessary support to operate, said the State Revenue Service operates inline with World Bank’s standard which prescribes that revenue authorities should be independent.
He said “full autonomy implies that we have our own corporate governance structure independent of the civil service structure, employ enterprise spirit in our operations, engage our employees, determine their salaries, benefits, rewards among others, with the hope of performing maximally”.
Mr Okon said no staff will be laid off because of the autonomy.
“Let me assure all our staff, we may engage more hands, but nobody will be laid off.”
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The chairman stressed that the autonomy will enhance the efficiency and productivity of staff and the organisation, saying that there will be deeper commitment to enterprise spirit as part of the organisation’s work culture.
Mr Okon said AKIRS will implement the phase two of her revenue reforms programme codenamed REVITA, (Revenue and Institutional Transformation) under the full autonomy regime.
REVITA is a revenue reforms guide fashioned by the Okon Okon led Board aimed to achieve five broad objectives namely; rapid and significant growth in IGR and taxpayers database, technology/automation of revenue collection processes, improvement in physical infrastructure and work tools, humanness and staff welfare, and building the institution.
Reviewing performance of AKIRS in the 2020 fiscal year, Mr Okon said AKIRS exceeded its revised IGR target of N23 billion, a feat he copiously credit to voluntary compliance of taxpayers in the State.
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“We are grateful to God that the Board was able to surpass its revised 2020 IGR target despite frightening headwinds, downside risks against the global economy and the generous tax relief magnanimously granted by the State governor.”
“We thank Akwa Ibom taxpayers for their improvement in voluntary compliance.”
Beside exceeding its revenue target for the year, Mr Okon said AKIRS was able to grow her taxpayers’ database by 200,000 taxpayers.
“We believe in data-based growth. In 2020, as bad as the year was, we had a data growth of 200,000 persons on the tax net.”
The Board chairman said AKIRS has set a target to raise N40 billion in 2021, this is N2 billion higher than the target given to the Board by the State Government.
Mr Okon said AKIRS will pursue revenue collection in the maritime sector vigorously in 2021, disclosing that the Board had already set up a department to mann revenue drive in the sector .
