General Manager of the Kwara State Agency for Signage and Advertisement, Alhaji Hamad Olufadi in this interview discussed the IGR drive of the state and other issues with TUNDE RAZAQ. Excerpt:

How is the journey so far as the General Manager of KWASAA?

Well have been in the saddle for some times, and I will say the journey has been enlightening and challenging at the same time, and collecting revenue from people is not an easy task, more also now with the way things are with the dwindling economy, very good at the same time because one learn new things.

What are your achievements so far?

The greatest achievement was that we made Kwarans to know that there is an agency called KWASAA, in the past people were not aware of what KWASAA is, they don’t know their responsibilities under KWASAA law, and what their own expectations are, they don’t know, but now we have been able to sensitize people on what KWASAA stands for and that is regulating the deployment of bill boards, the size, the character, the shape, and our ability to make the environment clean and collect revenue which is the most difficult thing to do.

How will the agency key into the IGR drive of the state?

Hmmmm, this is a big challenge, not just for the government, but for every Kwaran in particular, we are all aware that federal allocation has come to almost zero, from about 3.2 billion naira to about to 1.2 billion naira, so we have lost two billion and what we have on ground cannot even pay salaries of the civil servant, let alone local government staff, teachers of primary and secondary schools, and even pensioners.

The money we are getting now cannot take care of current expenditure, so what do we say of capital expenditures?, so it means we won’t be able to repair our roads, and we won’t be able to provide the basic amenities for people, so our own mandate is to generate more revenue for government and that is the basic thing, so how do we come in to be able to open up those out of the state that we have not hitherto reached within the last three years, I know we have been able to cover Kwara central to an extent, so we have the task of covering other geo political zones in the state now, so to get more money for government, we have to cover all these areas and that is the process we are into now.

How has the agency been able to regulate billboards at the wrong places in the state?

People would rather obey laws in breach than to follow the due process of law, some billboards have been there wrongly placed before we came on board, some of them are erected illegally instead of following due process, and the due process is simple, you come to the agency’s office, you regularise your bill board, collect a form, you fill it, so we will know exactly where you are placing your bill board, we will send our people together with you to go and inspect where you want to place your billboard, so if it is acceptable that is not going to constitute nuisance to motorists, to pedestrians and is not on flood and electricity right of way and is not going to constitute any danger.

So if we are satisfied with all these, we give you the go ahead to erect your billboard because we have to look at the environment to be sure the billboard you are erecting is not going to be offensive to the people and their environment, so if you don’t do all these and you erect your billboard, the law says the agency should remove the billboard without notice and these days, the agency do notify the owners of billboards before removing them if they are not regularised to come and regularise them, so we give them numbers, because when you have numbers given to your billboards, is easier to regulate than if it is not numbered.

So we can record them in our data base than if it is left unregulated, so instead of removing billboards indiscriminately, we give them the benefit of doubt, we give them the chance to come and regularise their billboard, then we go and inspect and then we can do due diligence, but if perchance in any of our monitoring or re-enforcement we found out that a billboard was wrongly placed and it can constitute danger to the environment, then we remove it.

What are the penalties for billboard offenders?

Thank God we have penalties stipulated by law and the law said we should take the offenders to court, they will pay for our lawyer, they will pay fine to the state and then you will pay penalty and then you will still pay your own lawyer, so it is a very heavy penalty and in some other instances, what we just do is to remove the billboard without notice and when you come to our office, you pay for us to access the money that belong to the government that was used in enforcing your structure but now the process has been made easier with the state government coming up with revenue court which I know is ready.

It will serve you notice and we follow the due collection process and if you fail to follow the process, then we take you to court instead of following you with armed security agents, but I want them to avoid these, Kwarans should not look at tax as punitive, tax is an instrument of development, government is not taxing people to punish them and that’s why people need to come and pay and not wait until they are called upon before paying their tax to revenue agency.

Does the agency have the exact number of advertisers in the state and how are you able to monitor their activities?

Well, in collaboration with APCON, we were able to get the exact number of advertising practitioners in the state and I must confess to you that they are not more than thirteen in number, except we would have those who are coming up again, most of the advertisers are not even registered with APCON but we know them they are not professionals because they only erect billboards everywhere but the people we work with are the professionals and you will be shocked that some un-professionals expose their adverts on professionals billboards, so we are trying to have a complete data base of advertising structures and practising advertisers in the state for proper regulation.

How were you able to detect quark advertisers?

We are always in constant interface with APCON because they regulate professional advertisers in this country, so if we per chance come across a billboard and we know who erected it, we place X notice which is removal notice, so if APCON sees anything wrong any where they notify us, so we have strong connection and symbiotic relationship.

How is the patronage right now with the economic situation of the country?

Yes the economy has not been very good, but we hope that very soon, things will improve since 2015 and I don’t see it improving for now, until things improve in the economy, a lot of them that we gave bills to, are yet to pay their money and a lot of them said they are willing to remove their billboards if that will make the government happy because they cannot pay but that’s not business. Because if you are not surviving in business then find alternative so that you can take care of your own civic responsibility to government but I believe like everybody is hopeful that from the quarter of this year things will begin to move up and then we can go after them and Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed has been very considerate and has informed us to do the best we can to generate revenue but we should be very human about it but for our agency KWASAA, we will go extra miles to generate revenue for government.

How is the patronage most especially from the private sector in the state?

The response of the private sector is the same as the informal sector, the companies are all complaining about power, no fuel, no money and the patronage is low and we have forwarded their bills to them believing that by the expiration of the demand notice a lot of them will come but I must commend the banks in the state, quite a number of them have come wanting to see, under tax law, what the agency can do for them so that they can pay but the unfortunate thing is that even while the branch manager is willing to pay, they still need to forward their request to their headquarters in Lagos for approval.

So the banking sector has been very forth coming and we hope things will look up despite the fact that they still have their own reservations also.

We hardly see home products adverts, what’s your take on this?

Yes those ones are our corporate clients, they all have billboards in the state, so we have billboards that belong to home products adverts and they are in Kwara but being our corporate clients, we give them their bills also based on the size, the number, and the character of their billboards whether electronics, static, lighted, big or small, so we give them bills and they all pay but their bills are different from all these informal sector.

How does the agency charge adverts from outside?

So far they are private sectors, and they want to advertise, so far they want to expose people to their brands, so that’s what advertisement is all about, you expose yourself so that you can be in people’s consciousness, so far they have to advertise in the state, they will have to pay for their adverts but what the government does is to collect revenue on the advertising structures, it doesn’t bother us who advertises or who did not, what bothers us is the structure that you used in displaying the advert and that is why the government is paying security agencies to guide and protect structures in order for their billboards not to be vandalised.

How has the agency helped in creating employment so far?

Like I do say, it’s inconsiderable to employ people when those employed before have not been properly paid due to lack of funds but recently some doctors were employed in the state, because we need their services and the government cannot close its eye and have all these fantasy hospitals, using a lot of money to run them and then without having doctors there that will oversee the place, so the same thing in other sectors.

If there is absolute need, the governor will give the go ahead for people to be employed and people would be employed, not just KWASAA but the same thing apply to all other MDAs and the beauty of it is that the governor held series of meeting with us last year on viabilities of some of these MDAs especially revenue generating MDAs, and gave us the matching order to go and pay the salaries of our staff, that there is no more subvention from the government, so it means we have to do things differently, we have to start thinking differently, we have to destroy the boxes we are in before and build new boxes and ensure things are done in such a way that we will get different results and not what we are getting before and that’s exactly the way the state government is looking at it, like running a business and when you run a business, you are expected to make profit.

We have had a lot of leakages in the system and there is an order that nobody should collect cash on behalf of the government, go to the bank and pay or you pay through the POS machines so that the money goes into the state government’s account, so we have a lot of infractions that the government want us to stop which we are stopping because if am not giving money to pay the salaries of staff, definitely we would be on our toes and we must run the organizations.

So these are some of the mandates given to us so that we can make money, so that we can run our agency and still leave some money for the government to give dividends of democracy to our people and that is why at KWASAA we would do everything humanly possible to generate revenue for the state government, we would use our head to crack coconut if the need be to improve on the IGR of the state.

Your advise for Kwarans on IGR drive?

Well, all taxable adults, all taxable companies and organisations, both private and public, all taxable schools, a lot of schools don’t even pay tax, they will collect taxes and they won’t remit it to the government, so my appeal to them is for everybody to pay tax as and when due so that the government can deliver the dividends of democracy to our people, so that we can also demand what is good for us from the government, so that we can hold the government responsible in producing all the necessary amenities, so Kwara has been under paid because the tax generated here is not commensurate with the economic activities in Kwara, so I want to appeal to all Kwarans to pay their taxes regularly as and when due, not to see tax as impunity but development.