The Nigerian cabinet has intensified effort to recover about N5.2 trillion debt owed government by some individuals and organizations with the approval of contract for the second phase of the Project Lighthouse.
The Project Lighthouse is a data engine that collects, integrates and analyzes data from revenue-generating agencies in order to create insightful information for improved decision-making.
The Federal Executive Council approved the contract following a memo presented at Wednesday’s meeting presided over by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who briefed journalists after the meeting, disclosed that the contract sum for the project awarded to Messrs Carterhouse Consulting was N316.5 million.
Mrs Ahmed explained that the first phase of the Project Lighthouse was awarded to the company in May 2019.
“It is one major area that we have witnessed remarkable progress in terms of recovery of debt owed to government.
“Generally, revenue loopholes have been aided by poor information sharing and enforcement.
“So, this project Lighthouse shows that many companies and individuals who owe government agencies have refused to honour their obligations yet are still being engaged and transacted with and even being paid on governments payment platforms like the TSA.
“The Ministry in 2019, issued a directive to all MDAs to aggregate and send to the ministry a list of all debtors and the outstanding amount they owe to all government agencies. This we have put together in one central point that we call project lighthouse.
“Since that time, we have been able to aggregate N5.2trillion worth of debt that are being owed government by third parties.
“As at today, we have been able to recover about 49.7billion of this amount through the effort and working that we have been carrying out with Project Lighthouse and we are still compiling.”
Ahmed said that the Project Lighthouse has brought together data from the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, the Nigeria Customs Service, the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, as well as data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, in one central point.
“We also were able to get data from three states, land registry data from the FCT, from Kaduna State as well as from Lagos state,” she stated, adding “Other states will also being joining in the second phase.”
She pointed out that the project has enabled the ministry to identify revenues that government could collect and be able to use the common platform to collect some of those revenues.
The Minister also said that the ministry was leveraging Project Lighthouse to enhance government’s revenue collection capability.
PIAK
