“The Company migrated towards the provision of business solutions based on the opportunities that exist in the motor vehicle administration documentation and other government public service processes”

(Official Website of Courteville Business Solutions Plc)

Lagos—InvestAdvocate online in its usual manner sought to find out more about the Property Revenue Manager (PRM) designed by newly rebranded Courteville Business Solutions Plc, operating in the Commercial/Services Sector of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to enhance Land and Building Enumeration, documentation and collection of Revenue due to Governments as to this regard.

In this interview with PETER OBIORA Online Editor of InvestAdvocate, Femi Niyi Executive Director (ED), Projects, Strategy and Research of Courteville discusses issues relating to the PRM and how the solution is capable of providing revenue management service for the numerous tax heads relating to properties and its uses.

Other issues discussed includes, how much the Firm has invested in the PRM, how many states that has embraced the Solution. Also discussed is the AutoReg Inspector; a remote verification tool that can be used by law enforcement agents to authenticate the genuineness of any type of documentation and information provided by individuals anywhere in Nigeria. Excerpts:

Introduction of the PRM

The PRM was introduced by Courteville Business Solutions Plc in July 2009, it’s simply a Solution designed to enhance the process of Land and Building Enumeration, accurately document and collect information on land and building, enhance compliance and law enforcement as well correctly and fully collect revenue due to State Governments from all kinds of levies related to land and buildings.

How much was invested by Courteville Business Solutions to develop this product?

In terms of investments, I will say that the quantifiable investment into this will be something in the region of N150 million in developing the application. In terms of time and material resources, platform; even in managing it, it is a continuous expense; because we have to provide the platform for it to run, we have to maintain the application, we have to continually improve on the application as it were; because we do not leave our applications; at one point, we continually develop and improve on them; of course, when applications gets into use, new development begin to unfold; so you have to stay abreast to accommodate those things, you have to improve, technology changes, our people want new things to be identified alongside; so N150 million is the first mark and there are other expenditures that continues to come up.

EDITOR’s NOTE:

“The PRM solution is capable of providing revenue management service for the numerous tax heads relating to properties and its uses, which include: Property Tax, Building Health Certification, Tenement Rates, Waste/Sanitation levies and Premises Operation tax (hotels & commercial centres)”.

How many States has embraced the PRM?

We have deployed this in Anambra State, and that is still the only State that has employed the solution. It has been somewhat challenging getting other States to come on Board; simply because you have to contend with some many other Firms claiming to have similar solutions and until they fail, you cannot begin to show how better yours is; because of political interferences and what have you.

So far Anambra State has enjoyed it immensely and we expect that very soon; like the AutoReg Motor Vehicle Documentation and Administration Solution, they will identify and recognise the value that the PRM Solution brings and begin to adopt it progressively. It took us upwards of eight months from when we started in Lagos State back then on the Motor Vehicle Documentation before we could move on to the next State in Nigeria and that is even the more obvious Solution; because Motor Vehicles are plying or Streets everyday and people also live in Houses everyday.

A lot of our Administrators are just beginning to come to terms with the need to adequately enhance all possible forms of Revenue for the State and actually put together proper documentation on what exist in a State.

What we do on the PRM in Anambra State, is that we work through our partners, Olis Werren the Contractor in Anambra State on the PRM. They provide the Front End, and we provide the Solution and backup the service. What we have done and the complete system we have developed is such that your bills for any of the headings are advised to individuals once it is due every year, provided we have captured your information on our data base.

We do this using the remote data capture system called the AutoReg Enumerator. Once your details are captured, you automatically get notification of your bills on the anniversary. For example if your waste bills are due at every 30^th of the month, in Anambra State, you pay every quarter; so if you are suppose to pay every 90 days, every 90^th day, you get a notification from the system via text message; because your telephone number would have been obtained. So, the problem of people not receiving notification on their bills has been addressed.

For instance, if people know that they pay every three months; when they receive notifications, they are advised to pay before the end of the next three months. Therefore, the next notification advises you of the next due period. Now you would ask what if I don’t have a telephone number. The system also can do an e-mail notification. You could say what if these two are not there; then in that instance, our operators in the State, knows those that the system have not advised by e-mail or text message. So they will go give demand notices to these people. The beauty of this is that they already know the locations; therefore, you are not going to start asking them if they have paid or not. Our Agent leave the office knowing that he or she is going to a certain House number; where they go and drop the notifications. The system is that intelligent to enable you work in an efficient manner.

How much is Courteville expected to earn from the PRM in the review period?

The sharing formula is determined between Olis Werren and Anambra State; we only earn a fee from Olis Werren for making the solution available. Our shareholders can take solace that we have constituently paid dividend to them and we would not invest in any form of endeavour that would not yield any returns to them. In fact the first concept for us has always been how much money is there for us; then even if we are going to make money on it, another question is how much value are we going to add into the system, would the State, the people of the State and everybody be happy if it is done? Once we can satisfy those two questions, what benefits is it in it for the people; then we go ahead.

At full implementation, the least we will achieve for Anambra State is a 100 percent increase in revenue collection.

FACTS CHECK:

“Since listing on the Floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange in year 2008, Courteville Business Solutions Plc has consistently paid investors of the Company 0.4 Kobo dividend for years 2009 and 2008 respectively and paid a higher dividend of 4.5 Kobo in year 2010 end”.

Advice for States that are yet to key into the PRM

On our AutoReg Motor Vehicle Documentation and Administration platform, we have constituently returned to the States, in excess of 250 percent of the previous performances, that is a testament to the veracity of our Solution. Now if we come up with another Solution, they can be rest assured that we would not do less than that the same level of performance with them. Again, what we are offering is something that will help the States achieve their ultimate goals; which is development of the State, what would they need to do to achieve development funding, how can they get funding by generating revenue; where does the revenue exist? The revenue exists from three main sources. One would be the Federal allocation, the other would be investment by the States, and last one would be revenue generation from the States internally. And who are the people they are going to generate the revenue from? The people who live in the State, who are going to enjoy the benefits of the services. Now what the State is asking them to do is not to fund these services 100 percent; but to provide possibly less than 10 percent of the cost of the services. This is just a contributory thing; because you know that you cannot go and use a service and not pay for it. You either pay 100% of that service or you pay just a percentage.

It is like sitting in a Hotel Room, you do not pay 100% of the cost of Air-conditioning, Bed or all the comfort; but you pay a fraction of the cost of putting the entire thing together. You do not pay for the cost of the Road you ride on, but you pay a fraction on a Year on Year basis. So, those are the things the State needs to achieve for its people, we are poised to provide them with the tools and enablement to generate the revenue. Investments are subject to Market fluctuations, but internally generated revenue, well structured and well put together can only increase from year to year. Thank God we have more birth rates in Nigerian than death.

We have the youngest growing generation in the world today; second to the likes of Brazil; so we have a strong workforce, entering the work Market daily and as they enter the work Market, they become taxable and the States needs to harness all these taxes.

On AutoReg Inspector in Lagos State

What we have done at Courteville is to look at the challenges that Government officials at all stages face in verifying the authenticity of documents provided to them on the Streets or at various locations; either by motorist or other forms of people; tax, documents any kind of information.

And we found out that the greatest challenge is that you cannot tell; no matter the amount of security features you put on any item, whether what you are looking at is the genuine or not. What we did was to look at this problem and said to ourselves that the greatest challenge no matter what item you put on any security document, what we can do is to create a means for officials to be able to verify the authenticity of any kind of document remotely from anywhere they are in Nigeria.

As long as the information of what they need to verify resides on our data base, we are currently providing motor vehicle Administration documentation services to Lagos State and 15 other States of the Federation; based on that, we were creating a data base on motor vehicle and its owners, so we went ahead and developed a means for remotely verifying the information that resides on that data base. In developing the solution, we thought to ourselves that there are technologies and devices that can be used to verify this type of things. In America and other developed parts of the world, Police Officers sit somewhere on the Streets and you provide documentation and they punch it into some device they hold and they confirm about you. But if you look at these devices and equipments, they are high level equipment and to our reasoning, we wouldn’t have the means of maintaining them in Nigeria, we can import them, deploy them; maybe in six months time, they may go bad and we bring in new ones. We don’t have that kind of money to do that.

The next level is that a lot of officers on our Streets are not all that sophisticated to handle these devices, that means you will need to continue to train and retrain; which is extra expenditure. We thought to ourselves, how we can achieve such level of precision with these devices and come up with something that is easy to use by anybody and cheap to maintain. That was how we came about developing a mobile application. The Mobile application is what we call the AutoReg Inspector. The Mobile application is the AutoReg Inspector; which is a mobile verification application that can run on any mobile handset that is Java enabled. So, what we did was to take the AutoReg Inspector, put it in a Mobile phone and supplied the Solution to Lagos State and they have now called the Solution for their own use as Laspector.

How would Laspector boost Government revenue?

In clear terms, even in the last few weeks it has been launched, Laspector has boosted Government revenue and we can see it immediately and the Government Officials are ecstatic about what they are discovering, you will find out that a lot of people drive around Lagos without their vehicle licenses being renewed. And they go around because they can make a photocopy of something from another State and show it to Law Enforcement Agents and they may not be able to verify, but now the Government Officials do not need to stop you, it can be a car parked and the official may observe that the license is not on the windscreen, he or she may not be able to verify the vehicle documents; but the moment the official has our device, they will just type in the plate number and it gives information as regards the vehicle.

So, if he finds out that the vehicle is valid to be on the road, all he needs to do is to issue a ticket to the owner and if the person is not around or maybe somebody that has noticed and escaped, the Law Enforcement Agent will send them an e-mail; because now they have access to all the information required to reach that person.

Advice to other States yet to key into the AutoReg Inspector

Most of the States are looking forward to start, we are just working out modalities with them and very soon, some of will commence.

EDITOR’s NOTE:

“The Lagos State Government earlier August 2011 inaugurated the Auto Inspector to remotely carryout Driver’s license and vehicle document verification, traffic monitoring and law enforcement. Auto Inspector is an automated device for verifying the documents of vehicles on the move without stopping the free flow of traffic”.

End