Forty-six
million bank accounts have yet to be linked to Biometric Verification numbers
and the funds in them will likely be temporarily forfeited to the Federal
Government, the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on
Prosecution has said. Mr Okoi Obono-Obla, who appeared on Channels Television’s
Sunday Politics, believes the Federal Government will be justified should this
happen. His comments come in reaction to an order of interim forfeiture made by
Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of the Federal High Court in Abuja. The judge had ordered
a temporary forfeiture of funds and freezing of accounts domiciled in 19 Banks
not covered by the Biometric Verification Number (BVN).
The
BVN was launched in February 2014 and as of October 8, 2017, 30.5 million bank
customers have been issued BVNs with 51
million accounts linked to the numbers. But for Obono-Obla who is also the
Chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of
Public Property, the number of accounts yet to be linked remain alarming. “From
Central Bank statistics, 46 million accounts are yet to be linked with BVN
numbers after three years,” he said, stressing however that he doesn’t know how
much money the accounts hold. According to him, those who have not linked their
accounts to BVN had violated a CBN policy had themselves to blame. “Anyone who
has not complied with that directive, it means that his account is fraudulent
and so whatever is there should go to the government,” he said. Despite
criticism of the decision and arguments that it is drastic, the Presidential
aide does not think it is that stringent, especially after the extension of
deadlines over time.
For
him, “Our laws are not even as strict as what we find in the U.S. In the United
States, if you do not operate in a bank account for three years, all the money
in that account goes to the federal government of the United States of
America.” Mr Obono-Obla also faulted the argument that it is not everyone that
has an account which is not linked to a BVN that is fraudulent, saying that
failure to comply with the BVN policy more than two years after it was
implemented suggested that the accounts are fraudulent.
He
added, “You don’t expect the government to sit back. Government must take
action to ensure that these accounts are closed or government must take action
to find out who are the owners of these accounts. Why have they not linked
these accounts with BVN as directed by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the
regulator?” The Presidential aide also blasted banks for aiding corruption and
financial crime, saying, “I will never absolve the banks from the endemic and
pandemic corruption we have because the banks promote corruption. They know
these accounts, they know people who bring money into these accounts and some
of these accounts are fake.”
Comments
Post a Comment