AT a ceremony attended by the leadership of the National Assembly and state governors, among others, on April 14, President Bola Tinubu inaugurated the new headquarters of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), formerly the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), in Abuja. Speaking during the unveiling of the new office located in the Central Business District (CBD) of the city, a move described as marking a significant milestone in the ongoing reform of Nigeria’s revenue administration framework superintended by the NRS chairman, Dr Zacch Adedeji, Tinubu said his administration’s reforms were aimed at ending revenue leakages, adding that no serious country could ‘achieve lasting prosperity on a weak and fragmented revenue system.’ He said: ‘We must not only collect revenue; we must build trust.’ On his part, the NRS boss said that the new headquarters represented institutional stability, operational efficiency, and renewed commitment to public service excellence. According to him, it showed that the government’s reforms were producing visible results.
The story of the new NRS building is indeed remarkable. It was built after 22 years of delay. For years, successive administrations spoke of the need to deliver a central, purpose-built headquarters for the revenue agency, but only under the leadership of the new NRS boss has the imposing edifice with 16 floors and three towers boasting green areas, a modern library, a digital museum, a restaurant,, among other facilities, emerged. According to reports, the edifice can accommodate up to 3,000 staff members. The project completed in 30 months is powered by CNG, taking it completely off the national grid and potentially saving approximately N8.2bn annually while posing no threat to the environment.
Against the backdrop of the litany of abandoned projects that dot both the Abuja and the larger Nigerian landscape, the construction of the NRS headquarters is indeed significant. Although there is no officially agreed figure for the total cost of abandoned federal projects in the country, the summations by government panels and professional bodies over the years were quite scary. In 2011, a Presidential Committee on Abandoned Projects reportedly identified 11,886 abandoned federal projects across Nigeria. In 2021, the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors quoted the same figure, putting the cost at over ?20 trillion. Among others, the National Library Headquarters, originally awarded for ?8.59 billion in 2006, with estimated completion costs later rising toward ?100 billion, is still only a dream. The Abuja Millenium Tower conceived in 2005 remains an unfinished project. According to experts, the Federal Secretariat Complex would be worth over ?12 trillion today if fully functional.
There is, of course, the Ajaokuta Steel Complex, one of Nigeria’s most notorious industrial projects. It is not exactly cheering news that the Lagos-Ibadan expressway remains uncompleted after about 20 years. The story is the same regarding the East-West Road, highlighting the criminal lethargy and indifference underlying governmental activities in the country. When Nigerians question these travesties, issues of policy discontinuity, corruption and contract fraud, poor budget releases, weak project monitoring, inflated contracts, and legal disputes with contractors, among others, inevitably surface.
If the Federal Government is guilty of abandoning projects, so are the states, which have not covered themselves in glory. In February this year, the BudgIT service delivery monitoring platform, Tracka, uncovered widespread cases of abandoned and fraudulently delivered public projects across several states, putting the losses in the range of N24bn. Against this backdrop, the coming on board of the NRS headquarters is a commendable development. At this very moment, many of the MDAs are tenants in rented accommodation costing taxpayers a fortune. In this regard, it is remarkable that the NRS building has not been allowed to continue wasting away. We commend the effort and recommend its replication across the ministries, departments and agencies. By ensuring that the project was completed within 30 months, the Adedeji leadership demonstrated what can be achieved with disciplined resolve.
However, while it may be true that a significant number of federal buildings went to waste because of poor budgetary releases, it is also true that many, if not all of them, are an exact picture of the kind of leadership they have had over the years. In the case of the NRS, it would be quite interesting to see what previous leaderships did with governmental releases. The NRS headquarters would not be standing today if the current leadership, which is credited with closing tax loopholes, expanding the tax net, improving compliance via technology and increasing non-oil revenue, helping to reduce Nigeria’s dependence on crude oil earnings, had decided to continue with the practice of using rented accommodation. If money was released for the project in the past but frittered away, it would be quite remiss of the government not to uncover the perpetrators of such heists. Nigerians deserve to have value for their money, and those who play ping-pong with public funds deserve to be thrown into jail. The Federal Government has a bounden duty to ensure that other abandoned projects are completed. It must probe the handling of funds allocated to them over the years.