Nigerian Government has recovered N49.7 billion debt from contractors and other third parties.
Gatekeepers News reports that the nation’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed disclosed that the N49.7 billion out of the N5.2 trillion worth of debts, was recovered through Project Lighthouse.
The Minister stated this on Friday in Abuja at the Executive Intelligence Management Course 14 of the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS), themed, ‘Security and Sustainable Development in Africa: Nexus, Challenges and Prospects’.
Ahmed explained that the project was one of the initiatives spearheaded by the Finance Ministry and its agencies, in line with the present administration’s commitment to sustainable development, governance and security.
“Project Lighthouse is a data-driven artificial intelligence engine that provides the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning with an intelligence and profiling platform to aid in policy formulation, implementation and impact assessment,” Ahmed explained.
“It enables the aggregation of data from a variety of sources to give us the capability to develop an intelligent data-driven revenue mobilisation model.”
The Minister, in a statement made available by her spokesperson, Yunusa Abdullahi, was quoted to have said the second phase of implementation of Project Lighthouse has been approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Ahmed, while speaking on the efforts made to tackle insecurity in the country, said security agencies were prioritised in the allocation of limited revenues.
“As an example, about 86 percent of the 2021 Supplementary Budget was dedicated to the capital and recurrent expenditure needs of the security agencies to supplement the allocations in the 2021 Amended Budget,” she said.
On the 5.01 percent economic growth for the second quarter of 2021, the Minister said the report was “very encouraging,” adding that it shows that the Nigerian economy is on a solid path to recovery.
“It is important to note that much of the growth was driven by the expansion of the non-oil sector of the economy where most Nigerians are employed,” Ahmed added.
