By Chioma Iruke
Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos State, raked in N418bn as tax revenues in 2020, despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s internal revenue service has said.
A statement issued on Sunday by the state’s Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability Programme-For-Results in the office of the Federal Ministry of Finance, stated that the N418bn revenue was disclosed by the Chairman, Lagos State Internal Revenue Service, Ayodele Zubair, when a delegation from SFTAS visited the state.
Part of the statement read, “Zubair told the delegation that the service (LIRS) had in 2020 grossed N418bn in tax revenues despite the COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic impacts.
“This also represented a 4.8 per cent year-on-year growth from N398.7bn generated in 2019 and 101 per cent of the revenue target assigned to it by the state government.”
It added, “Although, much of the progress was attributed to data driven tax administration and technology adoption, the purpose driven institutional arrangements, human resourcing, social contract strengthening and the political will of the governor of Lagos State were no doubt major growth factors as well.”
On the reason for the visit, the statement stated that the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in collaboration with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum initiated states exchange visits to foster peer learning on its World Bank funded SFTAS programme.
