By Citizenship Newspaper
Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) has requested commercial banks, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS), etc to provide detail information on revenue generated and utilisation from stamp duty payment.
Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, Senator Aliyu Wadada disclosed this at a news conference in Abuja on Thursday.
Wadada said the investigation was aimed at ensuring that the government maximizes its revenue from the stamp duty, which according to him is a significant source of income for the country.
Wadada said the committee had written to all commercial banks to furnish it with information, accompanied with figures as to how much that particular bank or collectively all the commercial banks have been able to generate from 2016 to 2024 as stamp duty revenue.
“It is of course by law, expected that whatever these commercial banks put together as revenue from stamp duty, charged by the banks, is or are supposed to be remitted to CBN.
“So the committee has written CBN to furnish it with information, accompanied with figures as to how much have actually been remitted by these commercial banks with CBN and how much has CBN remitted to the TSA.
“The second category is of course limited liability companies and oil and gas companies, they also charged stamp duty like commercial banks, the committee has also written to them.
“This committee has also written FIRS for it to furnish the committee, with information that should also be accompanied with figures as to how much FIRS. has generated on this category of stamp duty.”
Wada said given the need to make the exercise all encompassing, the committee had also written the Nigerian Governors Forum,(NGF) to also provide the information on how much they have received as proceeds of stamp duty.
He said given the effort and commitment of President Tinubu’s administration to provide needed infrastructure , concerted efforts should be made to ensure generation of revenue and its effective utilisation for good of Nigerians.
He said the amount expected to be generated from stamp duty as revenue was humongous, adding that the legislature should ask questions on revenue generated and utilised.
He said for fair understanding of the expected revenue from stamp duty revenue , the committee has written to the organisations to make comparisons with its own data on revenue generated from stamp duty.
“Because the angles are different,so we must write to generate information from the various agencies or bodies that I have mentioned.
“Then we reconcile the figure we have, and see at what point to ask questions, invite or possibly summon whoever needs to be invited or whoever needs to be summoned
“Our consultants have already done a fair job and submitted some data to us, but, you know, these data are not just enough to now go public.
“We wanted to make sure that what they have reported is actually what is there. That’s why we were demanding that this documentation should reach the committee so that we do a comparative analysis.”
Wadada said the organisations were expected to respond to the committee on or before Nov 25.
