TheCable

On Monday, Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget and national planning, launched “Project Lighthouse”, a debt analytics and reporting platform.

The ‘formal launch’ was held in Abuja, according to NAN.

The project uses advanced data mining and analytics techniques to identify tax defaulters, establish their tax liabilities and send notifications to appropriate authorities for necessary actions.

TheCable understands that Project Lighthouse sprouted from efforts to address policy challenges in the ministry through technology.

The minister said despite being in technology and data-centric world, Nigeria had no culture of using data and information to guide the formulation, implementation, and impact assessment of its initiatives and policies.

“This modus operandi presents a number of challenges, firstly, our policies are not usually empirically based. Second, we are not able to effectively track the implementation and impact of these policies, initiatives, programmes, and mandates. Third, we lack data to help guide the revision or optimization of these policies,” she had said.

“In response to the aforementioned challenges, the Federal Ministry of Finance initiated Project Lighthouse.”

The minister said the ministry was leveraging a multi-layer data mining effort to recover huge debts owed to the federal government by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Through the efforts of the project, she said, the government had been able to aggregate huge debts of approximately N5.2 trillion owed by MDAs, out of which N53.5 billion had been recovered in the last 12 to18 months.

Before the launch, Ahmed had, in 2020, inaugurated a steering committee for Project Lighthouse aimed at boosting the revenue drive of the nation’s economy.

While she chaired the committee, Mohammed Dikwa, permanent secretary, special duties, ministry of finance, was the deputy chair.

By implication, it shows the minister has been making plans for the project launch for two years. With the launching on Monday, Project Lighthouse could be viewed as a novel project originating from ‘ingenious’ leadership of Ahmed.

But it is not.

KEMI ADEOSUN’S PROJECT LIGHTHOUSE INITIATIVE

The initiative first came to being during the tenure of Kemi Adeosun, former finance minister.

Adeosun became a minister in 2015 but stepped down from office in 2018.

Nonetheless, as a minister, she was tasked with driving President Muhammadu Buhari’s agenda for the country’s economic recovery.

It was said that she saw the establishment of many landmark reforms in the ministry, including the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) which gave birth to Project Lighthouse in 2017.

In 2018, the ministry discovered 130,000 tax defaulters under her leadership. Adeosun said it was due to data compiled from Project Lighthouse.

The same year, she also discovered a N100 billion tax revenue shortfall by contractors through the project.

Reforms made under Adeosun include the establishment of an Efficiency Unit (E-Unit) to monitor the MDAs to check leakages in the public finance system; and the introduction of a Whistleblower Policy.

Others include ensuring compliance with the Treasury Single Account (TSA) within MDAs; Asset Tracking and Management Project (ATM Project), the establishment of the Road Trust Fund (RTF), and the introduction of the Fiscal Sustainability Plans and Budget Support Facility for States of the Federation, and others.

With that said, does it mean that Zainab Ahmed launched (or relaunched) Adeosun’s Project Lighthouse on Monday?

WE LAUNCHED AN APP ON THE LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT — MINISTRY OF FINANCE

An official of the ministry of finance told TheCable that the minister launched an application on the Project Lighthouse.

“She (the minister) didn’t launch the Lighthouse project. It was a Lighthouse App that was launched,” the official said.

“It is an app that Lighthouse wants to use to track debt.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include a reaction on the specific product launched by Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance.