Over 5000 Debtors Owe FG Agencies N4.67tn – Zainab Ahmed

The Federal Government of Nigeria has stated that over 5000 debtors owe its agencies about N4.67tn.

Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning said on Monday that the government had in the past 18 months recovered N53.8bn out of the N5.2tn owed to the 10 ministries, departments and agencies.

Ahmed announced this during the launch of the Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics and Reporting platform in Abuja.

According to the Minister, the Lighthouse project and the Office of the Account General played a great influence in influencing the discovery and recovery of the outstanding loan.

She said, “A perfunctory review of perceived significant leakages in government led the FMFBNP to issue a directive on September 26, 2019, to all government agencies in a bid to aggregate all government debts across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies, with a view to having a single window on the credit profile of the government.

“Sequel to the issuance of the finance circular, the ministry through the consolidation efforts of the project, has been able to aggregate monumental debts of approximately N5.2trn.

“These debts came to the spotlight from data aggregated from over 5,000 debtors across 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

“Working in collaboration with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, we have been able to recover the sum of N53.5bn within the last 12-18 months, through the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System as a recovery touchpoint.

“However, to consolidate on the current effort of this project, a debt recovery application has been built to be monitored by the new Debt Recovery Unit.”