When I think of my time at RIRS (Rivers State Internal Revenue Service) as the Chief Servant aka Executive Chairman, several emotions run through my heart, the chief of which is GRATITUDE…to God, to the Governor, to the staff (my colleagues), to my family and friends as well as the tax paying public & ors.

It was a short period but, because we were committed, God backed us up and gave us a beautiful story. My passion remains the zeal to be the coffee in hot water, the light that is set on a lampshade, the game changer. I believe that when we pay a little attention to details with the aim of doing things right, we can always achieve so much.

Worthy of note that the major part of my time at RIRS had the courts in the State shut with a lot of politics in the air. We were therefore not able to take defaulters to court to enforce payment, and we did not meet the House of Assembly to help pass any new laws, neither did we have to join in the politics as it played out. We stayed our course and pursued our mandate. All we did was to dust up existing laws, create relevant awareness in line with existing laws, rules and policies, create awareness, give the staff and public an enabling environment to ease the burden of adherence, get buy-in of relevant stakeholders without coercion and allowed staff to take ownership of their defined roles as we jointly defined them and we had compliance shooting high! Staff and public looked forward to RIRS daily. RIRS became a brand to reckon with!

We ensured that as a Service we did not promote nor support illegality after all taxation is driven by laws and how do we enforce the law and have others honour it if we don’t respect it?

Were there no dissenting voices? Of course there were! Were there no challenges and strong opposition? Oh sure. Plenty sef…but we were committed and so stayed focused. 

My journey started on 20th February 2012, one day after my father’s first memorial and ended on 10 November 2015.

Here is a bit of our achievements. To God be all the glory. Again I thank everyone that made my time so memorable and I hope RIRS would be taken to its much deserved greater heights.