The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) on Tuesday denied allegations that it had collected N22 trillion stamp duties it failed to remit to the federation account.
The allegation was made by one Tola Adekoya of the School of Banking Honours (SBH), which claims to have the mandate of the Presidency to collect stamp duties on behalf of the government for which it is allowed to keep 7.5 percent as commission.
“NIBSS is limited to sweeping collected taxes only. Only banks are approved tax collectors since taxpayers have accounts with banks and not with NIBSS. What we do is to sweep taxes collected by banks to the CBN. Sweeping in this case is to get stamp duties collected by banks from designated accounts by NIBSS and transferring digitally to designated account in the CBN. This process is legally documented, spelling out the roles of different players. Hence, there is an institutional framework on how things are done,” Oladele Agboola, company secretary at NIBSS, explained in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay.
“It is impossible for NIBSS to debit directly from bank accounts without clear directives from the CBN,” Agboola said.
“It is also not possible for NIBSS to collect stamp duties from banks if the banks have not collected stamp duties from their customers. Charging of stamp duties dates back to 2016 in which banks remitted directly to the CBN. However, in 2017 the CBN gave directives to NIBSS to sweep stamp duty charges from designated bank accounts to the CBN.
“With respect to stamp duty printed on the face of the cheque, it is Nigerian Mint that put that on the cheque and I want to believe that the Mint remits that charge to the Federal Government,” Agboola said.
Agboola also explained that different agents of government had invited NIBSS over the allegation by the School of Banking Honours.
“The minister of finance has set up an inter-ministerial committee consisting of the attorney general of the federation, chairman of revenue mobilisation commission, and other agents of government that are concerned with revenue generation on this subject and all reached the conclusion that the allegations against NIBSS were spurious and were dismissed by the minister of finance. NIBSS was also invited by the EFCC to explain allegations and NIBSS was exonerated,” Agboola said.
According to Ade Shonubi, managing director, NIBSS, the NIBSS is not mandated to collect taxes on behalf of the government but only sweeps taxes paid to the government through the commercial banks into a government account.
“Part of the allegations against us is that we are not willing to give information, and truthfully speaking we are not. Our role in NIBSS has always been to work for and as an agent of other parties, and we always insist that if you want information, you have go to the other parties who are our principals because we share every information with them,” Shonubi said in an exclusive interview.
The School of Banking Honours has been making accusations in a video shared online that NIBSS has over the years collected stamp duties to the tune of N22 trillion without remitting it to the Federal Government. It also claims to have the mandate of the Presidency to collect stamp duties on behalf of the Federal Government, a position BusinessDay was not able to verify.
