NCC to Deploy Technology for Tax Verification, Other Payments by Service Providers

Juliet Akoje in Abuja.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said it was going to deploy technology to verify tax and other payments to the federal government by network service providers.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said this yesterday when he appeared before the House Ad-hoc Committee Investigating the Duplication of Functions of Agencies of the Federal Government during their hearing session in Abuja.

He said, “We are currently going to deploy a technology solution. We call it revenue assurance solution. We have finished signing the MoU with the consultant that is going to do this deployment, so that we can be independently verify that the amount of annual operating levy (AOL) they are paying and other taxes are indeed what they are supposed to pay and therefore not shortchange the NCC or government when it comes to payment of taxes.”

He disclosed that the Commission which is self-funding, did a successful fifth generation spectrum auction where it generated more than half billion dollars for the federal government.

Danbatta said, “We, through what we call annual operating levy ran our operations, pay our staff salaries and allowances and even provide resources for intervention in the diverse areas of information and communication technology in the various parts of the country.”

Furthermore, he stated that, “these interventions have been verifiable. There is no state of the federation that we don’t provide interventions in the diverse areas of ICT. “We also provide training. We would like to ensure our citizens are ICT savvy by embracing this important technology because that is what the whole is doing. That is what we can do in order to ensure our citizens are socially and economically transformed to change the way they are doing things, the way they collaborate and innovate.

“We have records available to show that we have been contributing a lot to the coffers of government and a very good example is when we did that successful 5G auction. The proceeds from the auction goes to the coffers of government. We don’t normally take anything. It is gazetted that whatever we sell, spectrum, we do not keep the money, we normally transfer this money to the consolidated revenue fund of government,” he said.

The Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee Hon. Victor Danzaria, earlier said that research, revenue generation and service delivery were critical condition in the consideration process for merging or crapping agencies of government.