By Bilesanmi Abayomi
The Executive Chairman, Ikosi Isheri Lcda, Princess Samiat Bada, is set to boost revenue points as the council puts measures in place to track internally generated revenue.
She made this known while speaking recently with the Kosofe Post at the stakeholder budget forum for the year 2023, tagged “budget of reality and continuity,” held at the Council’s headquarters.
On measures being put in place to ensure that revenues are not diverted into private accounts, she admitted the loopholes while commending the supervisor for budget efforts headed by Mr. Shola Odubiro.
“They have done a lot of things as a leader, and I must be able to caution them.” “We have started something to God’s be the glory; I am appreciating the supervisor for budget, planning, and statistics, and the team we put in place for demography,” she said.
Outside there, we have employed about 70 youths to collect data so that we can make the necessary adjustments.
According to her, “a lot of people in Ikosi Isheri have not been paying levies and rates.” Yet they are part of the Ikosi Isherians, who own big shops and different things. They could be charged for levies and default rates.We have seen it; we can’t do without it. However, there’s a need to put necessary measures in place to checkmate such. “We have started it, and by the end of this month, they will round up the exercise.”
“I think by the time they finish their enumeration and the report is implemented, Ikosi Isheri Internally Generated Revenue will increase.”
Budget is critical to social and economic development—Odubiro Olushola
The Ikosi Isheri supervisor for budget planning and statistics, Hon. Shola Odubiro, has explained why budgeting is critical to social and economic development.
He made the explanations while fielding questions from the journalists during the stakeholders’ budget consultative forum meeting last week.
He said, “Budget is very critical because you have to project what you want to spend and what you are expecting.” It’s a projected income and expenditure, and how you manage your scarce resources—that’s what budgeting is all about—will determine How do you want to spread your resources among your locality and different wards? And so far, this local government has been able to do that.
On the revenue drive, the chairman of the council said about 70 youths were given employment.
“Just as the chairman said earlier, I came up with the idea of capturing all revenue points in the last few years. We were able to create employment for some youths; about 70 were employed for the project.At the end of the day, we were able to track all our revenues, which will definitely aid in the increment in our revenue generation.
He admitted that there were loopholes and highlighted measures that had been put in place to curb revenue diversion. He said:
“Anything that has human involvement, we definitely have a loophole issue.” What we have been able to do is that we have tried to computerize most of our activities so that they can be tracked at any point in time. “And we believe that we can always improve on some of those things,” Shola Odubiro stated.