Edo State government said its technology and innovation deployment would help it meet the targeted N100bn in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)by the end of December..
It said it had made tremendous gains in increasing the state’s IGR and managing some of the challenging issues with tax evasion and tax avoidance.
The executive chairman of the Edo Internal Revenue Services (EIRS), Otunba Oladele Bankole-Balogun, who spoke in an interview, said the state was making steady progress through audit processes, assessments and good use of the courts.
Bankole-Balogun said the state’s IGR was N74 bn at the end of August and had hit N79bn as of press time.
He said the current administration of Monday Okpebholo inherited a virtually non-existent digitalised system.
The EIRS boss said his team was working assiduously to totally digitalise collections in Edo State so that cash and manual collections would soon be reduced to the barest minimum.
According to him, “At the moment, the Edo State Internal Revenue Service is making tremendous gains in increasing this state’s IGR. There are so many components to our taxation, and each and every part of this mix is seeing significant improvement compared to last year’s review.
“Some other companies are lined up, and individuals are lined up somewhere. As you say, it has been traditionally difficult to come to grips with high-net-worth individuals. They have all the resources to evade and avoid tax, but we’re on top of it.”
He expressed the state’s preparedness for the new tax regime from January 1st, 2026.
“As you know, the new tax regime that will come in on the 1st of January 2026 places minimal emphasis on the low and high income. Our objective is to tap into the high net worth individuals who can pay much more than the lower income to harness that group and maximise the potential from the group.
“Digitalisation is on top of it. Tax bodies on top of it.
The FIRS, which will now be the Federal Revenue Service, is also on top. The Edo State Internal Revenue Service is also on top of it. Technology will help, and as you know, TINs, BDNs, and NINs will be critical to any financial transactions in Nigeria starting on the 1st of January. So all of these mechanisms put together, hopefully, will help us to be able to get more from these people who can pay more, actually, to give everybody a better life.”
