The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has made it compulsory for President Bola Tinubu, Vice-President Kashim Shettima, service chiefs, and other Very Important Personalities (VIPs) to pay the required toll at airports.
The minister, who addressed State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, said members of the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, and the military high command must buy tags for their personnel yearly so they do not have to pay tolls every time at the airport.
He said the government had lost over 82 percent of the revenue it should have earned from the access fees due to exemptions and corruption.
The minister lamented that VIPs were exempted while the poor were compelled to pay.
He said: “No more exemption. When we came to the office, we met a tradition on the ground where at the end of the year, all manners of VIPs would approach us for what they call complimentary e-tags or complimentary stickers. Whereby you see them coming into our airports nationwide.
“They don’t pay the access fees. They don’t pay for parking, they don’t pay for essential services at airports, and they are VIPs. And I told myself on my team, I said not under my watch. It will not happen.
“If this tradition has been existing for years, I will not allow it to happen. Because it is inconceivable that in our country it is the VIPs that don’t pay for services but it is the poor men that pay for services.
“The VIPs were supposed to have money to pay for services but they compel poor men to pay for services.
“Our memo says except the president and the vice president. And the president overruled me and said he and the vice president will pay, he said everybody.
“In one of the access gates based on the count of the barrier going up and down, we are supposed to be making 250 or 260 million from that gate every month.
“Because of exemptions, the returns to us are less than 100 million every month. And that also, of course, breeds corruption too because now you cannot track, you cannot have the audit trail of those free tags.”
By: Babajide Okeowo
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