Kogi govt. commences customization of first school leaving certificates »

…allay fears of multiple taxations on private schools

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Hon. Wemi Jones has announced that the Kogi State government has commenced the customization of its First School Leaving (Basic 6) certificate.

He made this known on Thursday at the Sensitization meeting for all the 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 Annual School Census (ASC) exercise which was held at the Glass House of the Kogi state Government House, Lokoja.

He said “We have observed some sharp practices when it comes to the first school leaving certificate; we made our findings and noticed so many anomalies in the process. We discovered that people don’t even need to attend or complete a primary school to have a certificate and we felt that such level of criminality cannot be allowed to continue in our state”.

He explained what the state government did was to deploy information communication technology to standardize the first school leaving certificate, hence only people who passed through the school system and wrote the Basic-6 examinations conducted by the ministry would be awarded the certificate. Hon. Jones said that Private Schools are part of the certificate customization process as long as they partake in the Basic-6 examination conducted by the Ministry of education, science and technology

While acknowledging that synchronizing of all those who have passed out from primary schools since the creation of Kogi State would be a hard nut to crack as huge data would be required for such a process, the commissioner however noted that for as far back as the availability of data permitted those within the range would be considered.

When fielding questions about the benefits of the Annual School Census Exercise (ASCE) and private school’s concern over issues of multiple taxations, the Commissioner said that the Ministry has appealed to private school owners in their own interests for cooperation as failure to do so might attract severe sanctions. He however pointed out that the ministry deployed interactions and dialogue in a bid to enlighten them about the benefits of the census event.

He stressed that when there is availability of accurate data and the government has access to funding support which is accessible to both private and public learning institutions, private school’s submission of accurate data would allow them to feature prominently on the benefitting table.

He said “Private schools if you inquire are aware that I have been a champion advocate against multiple taxations and I have on different occasions attended meetings between them and the Kogi state Internally Generated Revenue Services. The Ministry and the KGIRS have also met to resolve some of these issues”.

The Commissioner assured that the Ministry and the Internal Revenue Service were working on harmonizing the Private school’s tax in the state, pointing out that more money could even be generated when private businesses are not over charged adding that it was the interest of the Ministry and KGIRS to ensure that people who have their legal businesses in the state are not overburdened and makes profit.