Anambra State Government has warned that henceforth any traditional ruler, presidents-general or community leaders that get involved in revenue diversions would be arrested and prosecuted.
He said that government frowned at a situation where touts and other revenue scavengers would be arrested and kept in custody and traditional rulers and the like in the communities would make phone calls demanding their immediate release on the ground that the suspects are their boys.
Revealing this at a press conference held at the held at the Revenue House in Awka, the Chairman of the Anambra State Internal Revenue Service Mr. Richard Madiebo said that government would no longer tolerate criminality by proxy.
He declared that all IGR must be transferred into public funds, not into the personal accounts of traditional chiefs, PGs, and other local authorities.
In the presence of other senior government officials, Madiebo reaffirmed that all forms of touting were illegal in the state.
The Chairman brought up the issue of people claiming that government had leased some income windows to them, calling it as blatantly false while expressing alarm over the revival of revenue touts around the state.
According to Madiebo’s addition, Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo had suspended all revenue windows in the interim due to obvious serious abuses of such windows as people became law unto themselves.
Many organizations had transformed into teams that carried out commands that they did not originate.