The Director General of Nigeria’s Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, says digital economy has the capacity to boost Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and enhance efficiency of taxation in the country.
Inuwa said this at a panel session during the 22nd Annual Technical Conference of the Commonwealth, Association of Tax Administrators (CATA) organized by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in Abuja.
He noted that, Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, which NITDA serves as one of its parastatals, has put regulatory framework in place to check anomalies in the process of payment of tax to ensure transparency and accountability as well as build the confidence of taxpayers in the system.
According to Inuwa , Digital Literacy and Skills programme being run by the Agency will help to ensure that Nigerians are digitally literate and can use digital platforms to access government services.
He added that, the programme will be achieved through the Agency’s ambitious target of achieving 95% digital literacy coverage of Nigerians by the year 2030 through steady digital capacity building and empowerment of citizens.
“People, process and technology are critical components of Nigeria’s digitization programme whose potentials must be harnessed and channeled to the path for sustainable progress of the nation”, he noted.
He explained that the issue of taxation is tied to data, security of taxpayers, their information and confidentiality, and NITDA is working to come up with strategies for citizens’ data protection.
The NITDA Boss noted that the Federal Government has established a commission, Nigeria Data Protection Bureau to ensure data security of Nigerians particularly the taxpayers are protected.
“Digitization of the tax system will help Nigeria achieve five things; it will safeguard privacy of taxpayers, enhance performance competition, improve accountability, reform governance and entrench democracy.
“Statistics show that cyber security costs the World seven trillion dollars and is projected to reach ten trillion dollars by 2025. Though it is an expensive project, but effective and functional cyber security will turn around the fortunes of the country for the better,” he noted.
Inuwa also assured the participants NITDA’S resolve to work assiduously through the instrument of law that gave it a mandate to improve the functionality of technology components that will enhance taxation processes in the country.
“Leveraging the digital development potentials of artificial intelligence, block chain among other areas will accelerate the processes of strengthening the Nigeria Digital Economic Project”, he concluded.
