By Oboh Linus
The Chairman, Nasarawa State Internal Revenue Service (NSIRS), Ahmed Yakubu, says the agency will explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve revenue generation in the state.
Yakubu said this on Friday in Lafia when he received the “ICT Man of the Year 2021” award conferred on him by the State’s Bureau for Information Communication Technology (BICT).The NSIRS was also given an award of “Excellence in Technological Innovation” by the bureau.Yakubu said that the deployment of technological innovation by NSIRS had helped to boost revenue generation in the state since 2018.He said the agency was able to automate its revenue generation process with a central billing system using ICT to block leakages and make tax payment seamless for tax payers.
“With the automated process, all payments are done online real-time and we can monitor payments online real-time from all parts of the world.“You can make payment from the comfort of your home using mobile devices through Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), banking Apps or through Automated Teller Machines (ATM),” Yakubu said.The NSIRS chairman said it was working to fully leverage the potential in AI in order to improve its revenue collection.“AI is the way to go now because there are so many processes and procedures that you can explore, especially in terms of revenue collection.
“Once you have human interference in revenue collection, then you will definitely have some level of pilferage.“There are so many things AI can do for us. We can use it in the area of serving Demand Notices and even monitoring compliance,” he said.Yakubu thanked BICT for finding the agency and himself worthy of the awards.Presenting the awards, Director – General of BICT, Shehu Ibrahim, said it was in recognition of the organisation’s commitment, innovation and dedication to the use of ICT in their operations.He noted that through the use of ICT, the organisation had earned the confidence of tax payers and boosted the internally generated revenue of the state from about N 6 billion in 2018 to N16.8 billion in 2021
.Ibrahim added that the agency was also able to expand the tax payers’ data bank from 22,161 to 345,729 within the period.He said the multiple revenue collection system, the central billing system, effective use of their website and timely use of email for most correspondences were some of the reasons for awarding NSIRS Excellence in Technological Innovation.Ibrahim said that the award were well deserved and expressed hope that other Ministries Departments and Agencies would be encouraged to emulate and adopt ICT usage in their operations.
“We are also here to celebrate the NSIRS Chairman, Ahmed Yakubu Muhammad, for using his wealth of experience to advocate for the use of technology in revenue collection, making Nasarawa state one of the top digital revenue States in the country,” Ibrahim said. (NAN)(
