AGF committee working to recover N89tn stamp duty – Presidency funds

A duly authorised committee under the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is currently working to reconcile, recover and transfer all Stamp Duties funds into Stamp Duties Central Account, the Presidency has said.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said this on Tuesday in a statement titled “Stamp Duty: Facts Nigerians Need to Know”.

The fresh clarification came following the controversy over the purported trapped N89 trillion which started last Friday when the Secretary of the dissolved Presidential Committee on Reconciliation and Recovery of Stamp Duties Revenue, Muhammadu Gudaji Kazaure, said President Buhari secretly constituted the committee and that he was being denied access to the President to provide progress report.

Shehu, who on Saturday dismissed the accusations made against the administration and the notion that Gudaji was stopped from meeting with the President, said President Buhari had not “completely ignored these matters.”

He said the work of the Malami committee “is ongoing; it is not finished yet and the President will continue to show his keen interest in the matter of Stamp Duty collection.”

The statement read, “Our good friend and a committed party member, Hon Gudaji, has tried to draw me into a public debate which I don’t consider a good idea.

“In a video clip in Hausa and a press release in English both by this good friend of the administration, Hon. Gudaji Kazaure, invited me to answer questions, some of which are completely lacking in imagination.

“I would have ignored the allegations therein. Yet, a wise man once said that a lie can travel the world while the truth is still wearing his shoes. It is on the basis of the above that I decided to put some things straight and respond directly to Hon. Kazaure’s questions posed to me.

“Specifically, I will respond to each of his questions as follows:

“(A) “The money with CBN I & E window Account stood at $171 billion as at 2020; what is the source of that money? To my knowledge, the CBN-established Investors and Exporters (I&E) Window is a foreign exchange trading platform where banks and other authorized dealers can buy or sell foreign exchange. These trades are recorded by the CBN daily and reported as turnover or activity in the market.

“Contrary to Hon. Kazaure’s assertion, the I&E window is NOT an “account” where foreign exchange is deposited. It is simply a platform for trading foreign exchange. As of April 2020, the total amount of foreign exchange traded (either bought or sold) in the window was about $171 billion. The size of this amount suggests that there is adequate liquidity or availability of foreign exchange and that anyone who wants to buy or sell would easily find a counterparty to trade with. The amount does not mean that we have $171 billion stacked away in some vault or saved in any account.”