The Kastina State Governor has denied allegations of insufficient vehicle plate numbers in the state. Alhaji Isyaku Mohammed, the Executive Chairman of the state Internal Revenue Service, provided the clarification while briefing reporters in Katsina on Monday.
Mohammed was responding to a social media post claiming that a scarcity of number plates had hampered income production in the state. “KASROTA officials are terrorising the people for not using number plates, in spite of the fact that they know there’s no number plate in the state,” Mohammed cited the message as saying.
Mohammed added that KASROTA officers were merely carrying out their duties by implementing the regulation that no vehicle or motorcycle should be on the road without a number plate.
He stated that, contrary to popular belief, the state government collected more than N20.8 billion in Internally collected Revenue between December 1, 2023 and December 30, 2024, through PAYdirect bank payments. According to Mohammed, the organization generated only N9 billion from December 1, 2022 and December 30, 2023, when he took office in November 2023.
“I wish to inform you that we have number plates in the state. The issue of saying we don’t have does not even arise,” he said.He provided evidence of the number plates available, including 1,444 private motor vehicle number plates, 228 for government motor vehicles, and 214 for government motorcycle number plates.
“We have 1,886 number plates for motor vehicle commercial, and for motor vehicle dealer number motorcycle, we have 24.“Also, since August 2024, we have deposited N45 million with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in anticipation of more motorcycle number plates,” he said.
According to him, this is a nationwide issue, and the complaint made by the FRSC was a lack of resources to fabricate motorcycle number plates.He explained that Governor Dikko Radda had reduced the price of number plates by 50 per cent in September 2023, but not many people showed interest.“But for somebody to say we don’t have number plates, it’s not true, we have. I don’t want anybody to use that as an excuse to break the law.
“We have been pursuing people in the IRS who have tampered with the money of the revenue service. Therefore, we expected corruption to fight back.“And definitely, we have seen that corruption is fighting back,” he said.
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