Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola
The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders has criticised the Governor Babatunde Fashola’s administration in Lagos State for failing to improve the lives of residents in spite of the huge amount of money generated monthly by the government.
The Special Adviser, Taxation and Revenue, Mr. Bola Shodipo; and the Chairman, Lagos State Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Tunde Fowler, during a ministerial press conference to mark the fourth year of Fashola’s second term in office in Alausa, Ikeja, on Wednesday had noted that taxpayers increased from 3.8 million in 2013 to 4.5 million as of the first quarter of 2015.
At the press briefing, it was announced that the government’s internally generated revenue had increased from N20bn in 2013 to N23bn in the first quarter of 2015.
In a statement on Thursday by the Executive Chairman of CACOL, Mr. Debo Adeniran, the anti-corruption group maintained that the state government under Fashola had “little or nothing to show for the huge amount of internally generated revenue realised every month.”
The statement read in part, “The reiteration of our earlier position is necessitated by the declaration by the Lagos State Government that its average monthly Internally Generated Revenue had soared from N20bn in 2013 to N23bn in the first quarter of this year. As a responsible Coalition, we do not object to people paying taxes but a case of multiple taxations, as it is evident in the case of Lagosians, is highly reprehensible.
“More so, it is no news that many of Lagos State government’s projects are elitist in nature. Some of the projects are sited where users have other options whereas the areas where the mass of Lagosians reside are groaning under the burden of infrastructural development. A ready example is the Lekki-Ikoyi cable bridge, which was constructed for about N29bn whereas areas like Ayobo-Ipaja, Aboru and Agboyi-Ketu, etc are still making do with make-shift bridges.”
Adeniran noted that Aboru dwellers, for instance, were usually cut off from other parts of the metropolis whenever it rained because of the poor access roads.
SOURCE: The Punch