11 October 2013, Lagos – Delta State Board of Internal Revenue, DBIR, on Tuesday, took the Delta Beyond Oil campaign to the British High Commission to solicit support from the United Kingdom government towards the realization of the vision.
Executive Chairman of DBIR, Mr. Joel-Onowakpo Thomas, who led other members of the board on a courtesy visit to the British Deputy High Commissioner, Peter Carter, in Lagos, said Delta State has witnessed tremendous development in every sector within the past few years.
Joel-Onowakpo said that the strong desire by the present administration to continue the developmental strides it has recorded in the past few years, necessitated the visit particularly now that the state is in pursuit of the diversification of its economy through the “Delta Beyond Oil” initiative.
“Your excellency,I bring you greetings from the Delta State Governor, His Excellency, Dr. Emmanuel EwetaUduaghan (CON) and we thank you for granting us the privilege of having this opportunity to brief you about Delta State and Delta Beyond Oil initiative and to dispel the many rumors you may have heard about Delta State as being an unsafe haven.
Though we may have our own challenges, I am confident that these challenges are not peculiar to only Delta State or Nigeria. I want to assure you that, the administration of His Excellency the Governor of Delta State has taken steps to address the issues and it is yielding very positive results.
“Permit me to inform that the State has gone through several transformations in all areas of his electoral promises to Deltans in the areas of Peace and Security, Human capital Development and Infrastructural development. Testimonies of this transformation abound and we use this opportunity to invite you to visit Delta state to see things for yourself.
In fact, few months to the end of his tenure, we can confidently say that, there is no part of his electoral promise that he has not kept, bearing in mind that, no single administration can meet all the aspiration of its people in a tenure. The most important thing is to lay the solid foundation for the future which is what His Excellency The governor has done with his Delta Beyond Oil initiative,” he stated.
He said that DBIR being at the epic centre of driving the DBO vision, is building the capacity of its staff for improved revenue generation to drive other sectors of the economy.
– Vanguard