The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, on Tuesday debunked ongoing rumour that the apex bank was withholding N89 trillion revenue accruals from Stamp Duty, saying the rumour is ill-founded and untrue.
Emefiele made this clarification while briefing journalists at the end of the 289th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the apex bank in Abuja.
Although he said he was not ready to join issues with the rumour peddlers on the matter, Emefiele explained that he was obliged to set the records straight because the CBN is accountable to the general public about its finances.
The apex bank Governor expressed his surprise that the CBN was being accused of holding N89 trillion Stamp Duty, saying “I don’t understand how the central bank can begin to withhold N89 trillion” which it does not have.
Putting the whole issue in proper context, the banker disclosed that currently the total asset of the Nigerian banking industry stood at about N71.5 trillion with a total deposit of the banking system standing at N44.498 trillion, querying how banks could have held N89 trillion stamp duty collection in their vaults.
He further clarified that it was the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) that got a court order, after a series of controversies on Stamp Duty collection which was not backed by law to date, adding that the issue matter is still in court today.
According to him, since 2016 when the CBN started collecting the Stamp Duty, the bank had received a total of N378,686,315,505 so far, from which the bank had disbursed N226.4 billion, leaving a balance of N144.2 billion.
