LIRS Says Lagos State Generated N25bn During Lockdown Using ICT

The Lagos Inland Revenue Service (LIRS) says it generated N25 billion naira as tax in April when there was a total lockdown.

LIRS, head of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Mr. Rasheed Olu-Ajayi said this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) via an exclusive virtual conference on Zoom on Saturday.

Olu-Ajayi noted that the service was able to achieve the feat by leveraging on technology.

He said that though the revenue invoked was not good enough but it was better than starting from ground zero taking to cognisance the total lockdown.

According to him, “business was very good due to automating processes, so what we did was to have a business continuity plan by documenting products and events which we continue to work with.

“We invoked technology tools, with lots of our staff, working from home but chasing taxpayers. We were able to invoke a good amount of money, not a case of ground zero.

“Nobody envisages that there would be a time that the whole globe would be locked down and people would not be able to do anything.

“We were able to collect N25 billion in April when there was total lockdown, and this is a positive achievement.”

Olu-Ajayi said LIRS, as an agency of Lagos State Government, has the responsibility of collecting taxes and in some cases, business development taxes.

He added that without tax collection, the development projects in education, road and easing of traffic congestion among others being executed by the state government would not have been possible.

Hence, LIRS thought outside the box by exploring ICT to achieve the fit in revenue generation during the total lockdown.