The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed on Friday
in Abuja, inaugurated the Steering Committee for “Project Lighthouse” targeted
at boosting the revenue drive of the nation’s economy.
In a statement by the Minister’s Special Adviser on Media
and Communications, Mr Paul Ella Abechi, the Steering Committee for the
laudable project will be chaired by the Minister of Finance and the
deputy-chair will be the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties at the Ministry,
Dr MK Dikwa.
The Presidential Initiatives for Continuous Audit (PICA) and
Department of Technical Services at the Ministry of Finance will serve as the
secretariat of the Project Lighthouse.
The Minister in her inaugural address noted that, over the
years, many initiatives and policies have been lunched and implemented by the
Federal Government under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Despite the fact that we live in a technology and data-centric world, we have
not had a culture of using data and information to guide the formulation,
implementation and impact assessment of our initiatives and policies or even in
carrying out our mandate as a Ministry.
She said, “You will recall that one of the key economic
policy objectives of the current administration, as contained in the Economic
Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), is improving overall Federal Government
revenues by targeting and increasing revenues from non-oil revenue sources.
“You will also recall that in the last few months, major
steps have been taken to address our chronic revenue challenges. One of such
steps is the launch of the Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives (SRGI), which
some of you have been participating in.”
“Following the ratification of Project Lighthouse at Federal
Executive (FEC) on Wednesday 9th May, 2019, the Federal Ministry of Finance is
entering in a post-VAIDS or Phase 2 of the Project. However, this time around,
Project Lighthouse is being positioned as a ‘single source of truth’ for
revenue and tax related intelligence that will support the Ministry, its
agencies, revenue agencies, tax authorities and other stakeholders to be better
positioned to address the revenue challenges we are facing.”
She stressed that in the phase of Project Lighthouse, “we
will be using Big Data analytics, date sciences and related technologies to
gather and analyse financial data and revenue related data from multiple but
related sources. We would also use the sophisticated date analysis tools to
‘connect the dots’ between different data sets.
The term of reference of the Steering Committee include,
provide strategic direction for the Project; serve as the source of the data
required to populate the Project Lighthouse Platform; assist the Federal
Ministry of Finance with relevant data/information on mining of information of
tax payers and revenue value chain; review of technical aspects of the Project
and report on the progress of the project to relevant stakeholders.
While urging stakeholders to put in their best to ensure the
successful implementation of the initiative, the Minister said, “we can
drastically change our revenue story by fully and innovatively exploiting the
great power of Big Data Analytics, Data Science and related technologies.”
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary Special Duties at the
Ministry, Dr Dikwa, who will also serve as the deputy chairman of the
committee, in his opening remarks, said the Project Lighthouse, is part of the
Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives, which according to him is the policy
initiative of the current Minister of Finance as measures to boost revenues in
line with the provisions of the Constitution, the Fiscal Responsibility Act and
other associated laws.
He noted further that the Project Lighthouse will be a
platform that will help the Ministry gather information from both the formal
and informal sectors for the purpose of boosting internal generated revenues to
adequately fund the budget.
Members of the Steering Committee include, Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Joint Tax
Board (JTB), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement
System Plc (NIBSS), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Security and Exchange
Commission (SEC).
Other members are, Office of the Accountant General of the
Federation (OAGF), Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Abuja Geographical
Information System (AGIS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Special
Presidential Initiatives on Recovery of Public Properties (SPIRPP), Permanent
Secretary Finance (PSF), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),
Independent Corrupt Practice and Other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC),
Budget Office of the Federation (BOF), Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and
Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and National
Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
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