Lawmaker accuses Banks of flouting CBN rules on BVN, others

A member of the House of Representative from Plateau State, Dachung Bagos, has alleged that commercial banks in the country are still flouting directives of the Central Bank of Nigeria on the Bank Verification Number (BVN) as well as keeping charges on failed transactions.

According to Bagos, the commercial banks in Nigeria have adamantly disobeyed and continue to hold on to the monies out of failed transactions more than necessary, against the directives of the Central Bank of Nigeria and to the detriment of Nigerians.

He said about 45.85 million bank accounts were yet to be linked after the introduction of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2014.

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“Data released by the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) on June 23, 2021, disclosed that the total number of bank accounts in Nigeria as of May 2019 is pegged at 122.071 million. But the active accounts as of May, 2020 stood at 72.936 million.”

He added in his motion that despite the introduction of the BVN by the CBN to curb the menace in the financial sector, about 71 million customers still use their accounts without the compulsory identification, per data from the NIBSS.

He said, “The lack of legal regulatory framework and political will to deal with the unclaimed assets, especially funds abandoned and trapped in commercial banks, will continue to put Nigeria behind so many countries in the world that have developed the legal framework to deal with these assets.”

“There was a recent disclosure about the funds collected by commercial banks on behalf of some key Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government to the tune of N1.2 trillion.

“But they failed to remit the same to the federation’s account since 2016, as required by law.

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“Some commercial banks have refused to remit to the government fees and levies collected on behalf of government agencies and departments in the last 10 years.”

To this end the House of Representatives last week, set up an ad hoc committee, headed by Unyime Idem (PDP, Akwa Ibom State), to investigate the unremitted funds as well as infractions by the Central Bank of Nigeria.