Fake revenue agents are stealing us blind - Anambra

Emmanuel Obe, Awka

The Anambra State Government has lamented the activities of fake revenue agents, who it said "are stealing us blind."

The state's Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Prof. Chinyere Okunna, said in Awka on Tuesday that the revenue agents were in the habit of printing fake receipts and collecting taxes that were never remitted to government's coffers.

Okunna spoke while delivering a paper on 'Meeting the Millennium Development Goals through the Anambra Integrated Development Strategy' organised by the Department of Mass Communication, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, at the Nwuneli International Conference, Awka.

"People are stealing us blind," said the commissioner, who also noted that the failure to check the activities of the fake revenue collectors had become a recurring headache at the state's executive council meetings.

But she did not say how much the state was losing to the revenue cheats and what the government was doing to stem their activities.

Okunna said in spite of its lean resources, the government had been able to affect development in all the sectors of the state through ANIDS.

She stated that ANIDS had integrated well into the MDGs by prioritising the eight goals of poverty eradication, education, empowerment of women, reduction of child and maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, environmental sustainability and global partnership.

Though she said most of the goals were being achieved, the eradication of poverty, improvement in maternal health and sustainability of the environment were not likely to be achieved by 2015.

In his remarks, the chairman of the occasion, Dr. Benson Morah, said it would be difficult to achieve the MDGs because the programme did not factor in the forces that drive human development.

Morah said MDGs ought to have had economic growth, good governance, human rights and food security factored into it.


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