Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, has clarified the controversy over the amount of revenue raised from collection of electronic transfers popularly known as stamp duty.
The CBN governor told journalists at a post-Monetsry Policy Committee (MPC) meeting briefing in Abuja on Tuesday, that only N370.686bn was collected by all the commercial banks from stamp duty between 2016 when the stamp duty collection commenced and 2022.
From that total amount raised, Mr Emefiele said the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) had disbursed the sum of N226,451,720,158.88 to the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) Account for disbursement to the three tiers of government.
According to CBN data, the balance in the stamp duty account now stands at N144,234,595,346.40.
Recall that a federal lawmaker, Hon. Gudaji Kazaure, had accused the CBN governor and the apex bank of illegally withholding a whopping N89trillion stamp duty levies, an allegation that had created much controversy in the system.
“If there is any uncollected stamp duty money, we will force the banks to pay,” Emefiele assured while stating that his team at the apex bank will make sure every money raised from stamp duty is remitted to the federation account for the purpose of accountability.
