Residents’ Registration Is Not For Taxation Purpose

Ms Olayinka Fashola, Chief Executive Officer/General Manager of Lagos State Residents’ Registration Agency, LASRRA, recently spoke with journalists on the economic implication of the ongoing residents’ registration and its imperativeness. TheNEWS’ KAZEEM UGBODAGA was there

Since the commencement of the residents’ registration exercise, how has it been?

We actually launched on the exercise on 19 September, 2013. The pilot began on 10 June with our public servants before we officially launched the exercise for the entire state. Now, the premise behind the registration exercise is that there is no society that can exist without information. You need information to plan. You need information to allocate resources. You need information to be able to manage any economy; even small businesses need information. You cannot just locate businesses without knowing that you have customers that patronise you.

And this is the same for any state or any government. What we are doing is not new or unique to Nigeria. It is done in almost every country around the world. For better planning, we need to know who we are planning for. For us to provide government with that information, we have to register every resident, both young and old, irrespective of age, religion and ethnic origin. It does not matter whether you are indigenes or non-indigenes. The issue is the fact that if you live in Lagos State, you have to register. It means if you are from another country, you have to register.

Some Nigerians work in Lagos and live outside the state; what is the fate of such people?

This is the issue I am still discussing with the Ministry of Justice. At the end of the day, I am still a civil servant and I have to follow the law to the letter. But we know a lot of people cross the state borders to work here. We term them as daytime residents because they spend over 12 hours of the day here. God forbid, if they have accidents or they fall ill, it is our hospitals they will use. If they are coming and they drop their kids in schools here, this is not to penalise them. We need to know that they are here. For instance, when we are planning transportation and we need to put more buses on the roads, we cannot exclude them because they use the state’s transport system. But what I am saying at this point is, just to hold on until we get the necessary amendments to the law that established the residents’ registration agency. We, unfortunately, have to turn them away at this time, but we have to get amendments in place to include them. Yes, we can register them. But in our system we know they do not live in the state and they will not be issued permanent cards because they do not live here.

Many people believe that the exercise is designed for tax purposes. How true is this assumption?

All I can say is that we are the Lagos State Residents’ Registration Agency. We are not Lagos Internal Revenue Service, LIRS. We have an agency that already deals with the tax issue. That is why we do not ask for tax papers in the process of residents’ registration. We do not ask you how much you are making. All we ask is about economic status, which is a question anybody will ask. We simply ask whether you are employed or not. We ask whether you are a student or not. We ask whether you are retired or not. We need to understand if we are out for the purpose of tax, we will not be registering children. We will not be registering people who are unemployed. We will not be registering our retirees or pensioners. We will only concentrate on those who are eligible to pay.

But that is not what we are doing. You cannot give an accurate figure of amenities and resources you need to provide for the people if you exclude any class. Do not forget that many of our foreign residents might be exempted from tax. The exercise is open to everyone. The question of tax keeps coming again and again. But I am hoping that by the time they see us actually utilising the data from the registration exercise in health service, housing scheme or school enrolment, they will then understand that the residents’ registration is not for tax. People are afraid unnecessarily. It is normal to be afraid of something new, and it takes time to overcome that fear.

What are the processes for registration?

If you want to register, we ask you to provide proof that you live in Lagos and proof of who you are. This is not the registration exercise you will walk to us and say, ‘I am Mr. A’ and we will take you at your word. Proof of identity that you work for a newspaper is suitable enough because it is coming from recognised establishment. The voters’ cards can also work because we notice that addresses are written on the cards. In terms of where you live, you can bring you utility bills i.e. PHCN bills, LAWMA bills, water bills or any documents that indicate where you live. We have found that because this is a new thing, a lot of people come to us; they do not have these papers. I doubt it; even an illiterate person has the papers we demand. But they are not aware that they have it. They have rent receipts. Those who have houses can bring their allocation papers because their house addresses are there.

We have seen people that brought their bank statements and erased all the money. Just the bank statement is acceptable. You can even bring the slips from ATM transactions. People have brought different kinds of documents. We just need to do something to show that you live here. That is how you register. If you are registering children between age 0 and 15, they do not need to come and register. We do not need to capture their biometrics because children change every day. A child may look like daddy today; he may look like mummy tomorrow. All you need to do is to bring their birth certificate and two passport photographs. When they get to the age of 16, we will then capture their biometrics.

What has been your challenges so far?

The challenges have been interesting. Like I said, the residents’ registration is a new idea. And it has taken a lot of convincing to get people to accept the idea. What we have found is that most people expect us to come to their houses. We are working with a limited budget. So we cannot do house-to-house registration. Like I said before, we have found that they do not know they have the documents we request for. We have found a unique situation whereby some people are bed-ridden. We have been able to deal with such issues. We go and register such people in their various homes. We have employed people, but they have different attitude to work. I am getting glorious reports about some stations. There are, also, some stations that are not where we want them to be. The major challenge is that, if not for the recent announcement that you need to have registered by December 1, most people did not come out. Now, they are coming out in droves. Not that we cannot manage, but we need to be very patient. We will get to everybody. It is a continuous exercise. It is not what we are starting and ending tomorrow. We have also found that if you come across something you do not understand, please ask us. Do not assume that is what it is across the board. It is human nature. If you ask us, we can explain.

What are the benefits of this exercise?

Do not forget we are not the only state doing this. If you are going to work in the morning, you see a lot of children in the buses going to school. That is not supposed to be the case. It means their schools are too far from where they live. Ideally, their schools should be located close to their homes. But we do not have sufficient statistics to determine how many school-age children live in this area or that area. Even when you have the statistics, you will find out that they have the right schools. It might be that they have a primary school and not a secondary school. You might find out that children living are about to gain admission into the university.

So what they need is the university and not a primary school. I notice that a lot of families are moving to Lekki axis and towards Epe. And most of the people moving there are new families and newly wedded couples. This means the amenities they are going to need are hospitals that cater for children and pregnant women, roads to the new areas they are moving to, clean water, stable power supply, primary schools, daycare facilities and things that meet the need of young families. If you compare this area to old Ikoyi, our grandparents live there. They no longer require primary schools there; neither do they require secondary schools. What they need is healthcare facility that deals with the issues and problems peculiar to the aged. I notice one thing that our elderly people do a lot. They like to walk around. They like to exercise. Most of the places where they live there are no parks. If we know that they live in that area, is this not the kind of facilities we need to provide for them? Providing amenities in a particular area has to be based on the need of people living in that area.

Is there any plan to deploy data generated from this exercise for the purpose of tracking down criminals?

Inasmuch as we have not reached that stage yet, there is no need to speak much about it. You have to understand how access to these data is going to work. It is not something any person can tap into. You have be law enforcement agencies to be able to access our raw data. Raw data mean all information we have collected and biometrics. When we make the data available to either public or private entities, as the case may be, we can only do that to a certain level. If you ask for information now in terms of newspaper and your circulation, it may be that you want to know how many people can actually read in a particular area. I will give you that information. But I cannot tell you that Mr. Adebayo, who lives on this street, is literate. When it comes to law enforcement, we should be able to use it for law enforcement because we are capturing the biometrics. But we have not reached that stage yet. We have a different unit within the government that is dealing with forensics and it is hoped that sometime this might form our foundation of that forensic unit.