BVN: Reps to Investigate Unclaimed Trillions of Naira in Banks

The House of Representatives has taken a step to investigate the alleged trillions of Naira trapped in commercial banks because owners of the funds have failed to link their bank accounts with the Bank Verification Number (BVN).

In February 2014, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the BVN and gave bank customers till June 2015 to link their accounts with the BVN.

The scheme was introduced to check and combat money laundering, illicit financing and duplications in the ownership of bank accounts used for fraud.

But almost eight years after the policy was introduced by the apex bank, several bank account owners are to link their accounts with the BVN, meaning they have not been able to access funds in their accounts.

On Thursday, this issue was raised at the lower arm of the National Assembly in a motion moved by a lawmaker, Mr Dachung Bogos.

According to the green chamber of the parliament, about 45.85 million bank accounts are yet to be linked to BVNs as reports by the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) of ù, stated that the total number of bank accounts in Nigeria as at May 2019 was 122.07 million, while active accounts as at May 2020 stood at 72.94 million.

It was claimed that suspicious monies running into trillions of Naira were left unclaimed in various banks across the country because their owners had failed to register for the BVN or link to existing ones where appropriate and that commercial banks have flagrantly continued to hold on to the unclaimed monies longer than necessary against the directives of the CBN.

Click To Read: CBN Moves to Bar BVN Violators, Watch-Listed Customers from Banking Services

The lawmakers argued that despite the introduction of BVN to curb the misappropriation of funds in the financial sector, about 71 million customers still use their accounts without the compulsory requirement from NIBSS.

When the market was debated during plenary, it was agreed that there is a need to constitute an ad-hoc to look into the suspicious and unclaimed funds in commercial banks as well as unremitted funds collected by commercial banks on behalf of agencies and departments of the federal government.