A WELCOME ADDRESS DELIVERED BY SIR MONDAY JOHN ONYEME, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN DELTA STATE BOARD OF INTERNAL REVENUE, AT THE JUST CONCLUDED STAKEHOLDERS RETREAT ON INTERNALLY GENERATED REVENUE ON MONDAY 18th JANUARY 2016, AT SONGHAI DELTA AMUKPE,SAPELE.
Your Excellency Senator DR Ifeanyi Okowa
The Executive Governor Of Delta State
Your Excellency Barr Kingsley Burutu Otuaro
the Deputy Governor Of Delta State,
The Honourable Speaker Of Delta State House Of Assembly,
My Lord, The Chief Judge Of Delta State
Hon Members Of Delta State House Of Assemly
Hon Commissioners
The Secretary To The State Government
The Head Of Service
The Chief Of Staff Government House
Special Advisers/Political and Economic Advisers
Permanent Secretaries
Chairmen Of Local Government Councils
Your Royal Highnesses
My Lord Spiritual and Temporal
Captains Of Industries,General Managers Of Companies,Banks and Other Financial Institutions,
Gentlemen Of The Press
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen


With great pleasure and expectation and on behalf of the Board, Management and staff of the Delta State Board Of Internal Revenue DBIR, I Welcome His Excellency, Sen Dr Ifeanyi Author Okowa, the Executive Governor Of Delta State and his entourage and our other very dear esteemed guest and stakeholder to this retreat with the theme: IMPROVING IGR ---A collective responsibility of all Deltans for the actualization of the S.M.A.R.T Agend.

The S.M.A.R.T agenda which is the vehicle through which the OKOWA administration promise of prosperity for all Deltans is to be actualised, is a highly ambitous and audacious program aimed at. unpresidented Infrastructure renewal,development and human empowerment. It is beyond debate therefore,that the successful implementation of the S.M.A.R.T agenda must of necessity be anchored on the availability of adequate financial resources.

In our life as a nation when we bragged even at National leadership level about money not been our problem, but how to spend it .Our confidence was anchored on the huge petro dollars which lined our pocket as a nation from oil exploration and export. This was a golden era of sorts,an era of unpresidented wealth but regrettably, due to lack of,or poor vision ,a skewed thought process and outright plainlessness. We squandered and fritter away our famed wealth into unwealth into unworthy causes.We Could not make the right choices or take the right decisions.

The result is that with our huge petro dollar income of yesterday,we could not lay a foundation worth the name for a post oil-era,or at best an era of sharply declined oil revenue as we are now in.
Surely,we know where we are currently and why we are there. Our current situation is not a sudden imposition from outer space,but the cumulative results of many years of neglect,poor, or lack of planning outright vision lessens and failed leadership.We failed to make hay while the petro dollar sun shine brightly above. Today, we are paying the huge cost and facing the monumental consequences of national profligacy.
Whether we swim or sink will depend on what policies we put in place and the actions we take from this point onward.

Let the truth frighten or hurt us if it will,but we have reached a critical stage where we must tell ourselves the whole truth and nothing but the truth about our very poor economic standing and the very visible threat to our collective survival as a people. Wallowing in self deceits and half truths will only aggravate our already very bad situation. As of today,oil is no longer the prime resource it used to be and does not command or occupy the pride of place it did in the recent past. For a combination of factors, oil is now selling below 30 dollar/ barrel, which some experts say is below the cost of production and a further crash towards the 20dollar/barrel mark has been predicted. At this level, the oil companies may just pack up as they cannot produce at a loss. The situation is frightening.
The big Arab producers are unwilling to cut back on production to assist price rebound. American oil is coming into the market for the first time in 40years. With the sanction on her lifted, Iranian oil is finding its way back into the International market. With the spectacular, positive results of the alternative energy source experiments, the oil market is shrinking daily,with a corresponding fall in the value of the NAIRA, which now exchanges for as low as #350 to dollar. In reality therefore, the much dreaded post- oil era which many thought was another lifetime away, is now here with us an era in which taxes from oil and allied ventures will either evaporate completely, or be reduce to an insignificant level.

So, where do we go from here? What are our realistic and viable options? Finding the right answer to these questions, learning the lessons from the past,taking the very tough decisions and making the very difficult choices which we parried or defend in the past,are the reasons for this retreat, because therein lie our collective survival
The verdict is near unanimous, that an aggressive expansion of our internally Generated Revenue base and opportunities is the way to go and our success or failure in this task is hinged on our modus operandi and commitment level. We are in deep crisis an emergency which requires that urgent and decisive steps be taken by all of us to save us. Our situation is too grave and urgent to accommodate any spectacles or bye standers because what is threatened, or at risk, is the Economic survival of All Of Us, and not some of Us. Yes,all hands must be on deck. Whatever we are, and no matter our primary assignment, we must make our modest contribution to the expansion of our IGR base.
In this new era therefore,it will it will be our collective responsibility to seek out and develope alternative income sources to the government . It is reassuring to observe that in the few months of the existence of this board, there has been an unprecedented surge in stakeholders and other third parties interest in the affairs of the board. We pray and hope that this surge in interest is not base on selfish consideration, but on the genuine desire to ensure that the OKOWA administration delivers handsomely on its S.M.A.R.T Agenda to usher in the era of Prosperity For All Deltans.

As a Board, we have as we should,rolled up our sleeves and taken the lead and we urge you to follow. We are urgently putting in place new strategies and initiatives and fine turning old ones to adapt them to the realities of today. Strategic intelligence is being deployed with a view to swooping decisively on the largely untapped informal sector. The tax net is being expanded and we shall continue to do so until every tax payer is brought in. I am pleased to announce here, that through our field service and investigative activities,we have a whooping new 3500 businesses which hopefully will be in the tax net within the next sixty days at the most. This will bring our current tax base of 1700 to an encouraging 5,200.

The Implications for our IGR Growth are pleasantly obvious. We are also not letting up on our other Programmes- tax education and public enlightenment,manpower development ,retreats,seminars etc.
To our partners,we must say this: that tax collection is a massive operation requiring the deployment of human and other assets. We must move away from the pretentious and complacent routine approach of the past which curiously focused the exercise on some blue ship companies to the neglect of thousands of businesses which are registered daily. Now, everybody must be brought to the tax net. We must truly collect tax and not just collate figures. We must identify and do those things which state like Lagos are doing and sustain the tempo. We must not see internal generating activities as a honey pot to satisfy our appetite, rather than meet our collective goals. We must de-emphasize our personal gains.

CONCLUSION
If we do nothing now to change the course of events,the looming disaster will surely happen. The time to plot our escape is now, not tomorrow . Now that we know while we are where we are,we must be courageous enough to take very decisive and audacious steps to regain our lost paradise. Yes we can,if we are all determined. The mistake of the past will be too costly,if not suicidal to repeat. Our collective destiny is nowhere else,but in our own hands. That is the beauty of our situation.
We must emphatically progress from the era of endless postulations to an era of the practical application of all the articulated principles. If for altruistic reasons we partner and generally collaborate in growing our internally generated revenue,then I venture to say that no matter how rough and tough things may look now, " the ravening clouds" of crashing oil prices " shall no longer be victorious. They shall no longer possess the sky of our economic freedom and prosperity for all Deltans. There surely shall be light at the end of the long dark tunnel.

Thank You