By Fatima Saka
The Nigeria Senate has urged the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure to be aggressive in generating more revenue for the country.
This follows the presentation by the agency on Wednesday in Abuja, during a committee meeting .
The Chairman Committee on NASENI Sen. Ezenwa Onyewuchi, representing Imo East Senatorial District, saying that the agency has the lofty ideas but will not come to fruition without proper funding.
He added that the agency has capacity to generate enough to shore up the shortfall in the economy.
He urged NASENI to remain on the frontline for the industrial revolution of Nigeria and to spend funds judiciously, as there will be no excuse for failure, reiterating that the Senate believes in the capacities of the men and women in the employ of the agency.
The senate reiterated that the agency needs to be more proactive in revenue collection.
“I don’t know how often you’ve been interfacing with the IRS revenue collection, what you intend to do towards collecting revenue tax duty?
In response to that, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, Executive Vice Chairman said the agency decided to have a database of all the sectors, aviation, Oil and gas among others.
“All the companies in the sector, get their registration from the FIRS , and pursue whenever they declare their work, get copies of all these things. Those are the things we tend to, for us to always at least be at one step ahead of whatever they collected.”
“That’s one of the products that I was talking about is where does that go into the market leave was the consolidated revenue performance because when I say mean and devoted is listed as one of the independent revenue sources for the project,” He added
He urged NASENI to remain on the frontline for the industrial revolution of Nigeria and to spend funds judiciously, as there will be no excuse for failure, reiterating that the Senate believes in the capacities of the men and women in the employ of the agency.
Recall that NASENI was founded to stimulate linkages between science and technology , academics and the industrial sectors of the country’s economic and industrial transformation.
