Bigly Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of Bigly Group and one of the principal partners of the Anambra State Government in revenue collection has publicly declared that it is not at war with the Executive Director of Operations of the state internal revenue service, Dr. Christian Madubuko.
Speaking at a press conference in Awka, the Project Manager, of Bigly Oil and Gas Company, Mr. Chukwuma Nwabuikwu Michael, said Bigly performed her functions in alignment with the guidelines provided by the Anambra State Internal Revenue Service as it concerns revenue collections.
The project manager who stated categorically that Bigly Oil and Gas Company was not aware of any director of the AIRS trying to witch-hunt the company for carrying out her assignments diligently, maintained that since the company commenced revenue collection as an officially accredited partner to the state government, it has not defaulted.
The Bigly Oil and Gas official stated that the company has trained over 300 youths for the job and the target of the company, according to him, was to key into the governor’s mandate of completely removing Agboros from the streets and gainfully engage them.
He said the company has set up its Compliance Quality Control Team which will traverse the three senatorial zones of the state to monitor the operations of revenue collectors under Bigly Oil and Gas Company.
He was also emphatic that any of her workers caught smoking cigarettes or taking hard substances while on duty would not only be sacked but would also be handed over to the security agents for proper prosecution.
The project manager restated the fact that the staff of the organization were trained not to engage motorists violently no matter the situation. Even if a driver pushed them around in the course of haulage collection, they should not engage the driver violently.
He said the field agents were briefed that under no circumstances should they be seen holding cigarettes or a sachet of alcohol in any of the revenue beats covered by Bigly Oil and Gas Company.
They had expected Dr. Christian Madubuko who claimed he caught Bigly Boys with Tramadol and other hard drugs to write to the company since they were partners, but he declined and resorted to tarnishing the image of the company for some obscure reasons.
Although he explained that Bigly Oil and Gas Company was not the only authorized revenue partner to the Anambra State Government, he said the company has been licensed to collect haulage tax and their staff are always properly kitted at their duty posts.
Though he pointed out that Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo didn’t authorize Bigly Oil and Gas Company to collect cash he was equally of the opinion that it is not every driver passing through Anambra state that has a POS debit card. There are also instances of network failures resulting in an outage of the network operator that provides service for the POS machine.
In order to address the foregoing, the Bigly Oil and Gas project manager said the company printed government-approved receipts which could be issued as veritable alternatives to machine failures, network outages, or drivers opting to pay by cash, stressing that all cash transactions are remitted to the government electronically.
He said Bigly Oil and Gas Company obtained her authority paper to collect revenue for the Anambra State Government on 1st September this year while it began statewide haulage collection on 26th September this year in the most civic manner, adding that the era of people breaking side mirrors or taking part of the goods the truck is conveying is completely over in Anambra State with the intervention of Bigly Oil and Gas Company
By Raymond Ozoji
Oct 8, 2023