Lawan made this known on Thursday while delivering an address to mark the celebration of his 64th birthday in Abuja.
President of the Nigerian Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has lamented that the country generates abysmally low revenue and thus relies on loans to execute projects and for infrastructural development.
Lawan made this known on Thursday while delivering an address to mark the celebration of his 64th birthday in Abuja.
The Senate President, while lauding the efforts of the federal government in the area of infrastructural development, underscored the need to improve revenue generation and adequately sustain its collection, a statement issued by Dr. Ezrel Tabiowo, Special Assistant (Press) to the Senate President said.
"One other challenge is lack of sufficient revenues for government to undertake its numerous laudable and noble national development projects across the country.
"Most of what we do in terms of national development is to borrow funds for us to execute those projects.
"I think we have to work hard to improve our revenue generation and collection because it is not looking too sustainable that we tolerate people and some agencies of government, to misapply or not even declare the revenues they collect. We can't continue with that," Lawan said.
The Senate President said the upper chamber within the remaining period of its lifespan, would engage revenue generating agencies with a view to shoring up the country's earnings.
He however advised the federal government to review the waivers and concessions already granted to corporate entities.
Lawan noted that doing so would provide more revenue to government and boost to the nation's economy.
He said, "So, for us in the Senate, we have decided that for the remaining part, we will continue to engage with our revenue generating agencies until we get better outcomes from them. This is possible and has become imperative.
"Also, the concessions and waiver that government has given, we need to review that. Now every kobo counts, because we are in a very difficult situation.
"Where a waiver cannot be justified anymore because of our present circumstance, then such waiver should be reversed or renegotiated. But definitely, we need to work hard to improve the revenue generation and collection by the MDAs and other government agencies."
Lawan said the Ninth National Assembly has delivered on its legislative agenda for Nigerians.
According to him, the Ninth Assembly after its inauguration, stated its commitment to working for Nigerians with a robust legislative agenda that covered critical areas in need of immediate intervention.
Prominent amongst such areas are security, economy, revenue generation and collection, education and constitution amendment.
He said, "We decided to be focused, strategic, tactical, patriotic, tolerant and patient in our work in the ninth Senate.
"We defined what we wanted to do in the ninth Senate when we were campaigning. We said we will work for Nigerians, and when we drew our legislative agenda after we were inaugurated, we worked on it. Thank God, almost everything we put there as legislative agenda, we finished with them in a good way."