Business
Nigerian govt takes ownership of funds held in bank accounts not linked to BVNs
The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has granted a request by Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, for a temporary forfeiture of all funds held in bank accounts not linked to BVNs — and whose ownership could not be absolutely identified.
Also to be seized by the Nigerian government are funds held in bank accounts without sufficient know-your-customer credentials, court documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES said.
Industry experts expressed strong reservations about a lack of specific legal framework for the unprecedented forfeitures and potential coercion of banks by the federal authorities in separate interviews with PREMIUM TIMES Saturday.
No estimates were immediately available, but it is widely held that billions of naira remained trapped in the unlinked bank accounts since 2015 when the Central Bank of Nigeria ordered commercial banks to stop attending to new enrollees.
The order followed an originating motion of notice filed by Mr. Malami on behalf of the Nigerian government on September 28.
Nnamdi Dimgba, the Federal High Court judge who presided over the ex-parte motion, granted all the nine reliefs sought by Mr. Malami —himself represented by a lawyer, Usman Dakas— on October 17.
The court ordered all the 19 deposit money banks, DMBs, operating in the country to release to Nigerian government names of accounts not yet connected to BVN; account numbers; their outstanding balances; domiciling locations; and domiciliary accounts without BVN and where they are domiciled.
Nigeria deposit money banks that were listed as respondents in the ex-parte suit are: Access Bank, Citi Bank, Diamond Bank, Ecobank, Fidelity Bank, First Bank and First City Monument Bank.
Others are: Guarantee Trust Bank, Heritage Bank, Keystone Bank, Skye Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Sterling Bank, Union Bank and United Bank for Africa.
The remaining three are: Unity, Bank Wema Bank and Zenith Bank.
The court also ordered all of them to disclose any investments made with funds and to withhold authorisation for any outward inflow of funds from the accounts. All the details are to be submitted to Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, NIBSS, and the CBN for authentication.
The banks were also directed to publish all bank accounts not linked to BVN in national newspapers with a 14-day notice for individuals with interest in such accounts to come forward and justify why their funds should not be forfeited to the Nigerian government.
Mr. Dimgba also ordered the CBN, which was joined as 20th respondent alongside the 19 DMBs, to appoint an official who will examine all the details submitted to the apex bank for compliance.
The government argued the matter under Section 3 of the Money Laundering Act, 2011.
The section said banks must “ensure that documents, data or information collected under the customer due diligence process is kept up-to-date and relevant by undertaking reviews of existing records, particularly for higher risk categories of customers or business relationships.”
The BVN is a unique identification number that can be verified and used to transact business across all the banking platforms in Nigeria.
The CBN imposed the policy to capture customers’ data for financial transactions and check fraud in the banking system.
Registration for BVNs commenced on February 14, 2014, across the country. The CBN said over 20.8 million customers enrolled 40 million bank accounts before the October 31, 2015, final deadline for customers residing within the country.
The CBN extended the deadline for Nigerians in the diaspora to December 2016 to sign up for the BVN system. But hundreds of thousands home and abroad are still believed to be left behind.
“Illogical, hasty‘
A financial analyst who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES about the court order rebuked the Nigerian government for attempting to shore up its revenues by forcibly seizing funds owned by private individuals.
“There’s no basis for this desperate move by the federal government because customers who owned the funds met the required criteria at the time they set up their bank accounts,” said Ugodre Obi-Chukwu, a Lagos-based financial analyst. “This is an attempt to use federal might to coerce banks into submitting funds that belong to customers for its own use.”
The Nigerian government had fallen on hard times since 2014 when dwindling price of crude oil began to take its toll on the country’s revenues.
The Buhari administration, which assumed office in May 2015, has made concerted pushes to source funding to finance a bloated federal civil service and new capital projects, including borrowing from local and international markets.
The government also said it would rely on recovered loot to finance its budget this year.
While Mr. Obi-Chukwu recognised financial challenges confronting the administration, he maintained that no policy must be implemented by fiat in a democratic system.
“The Money Laundering Act they used to sway the judge is clearly not sufficient to confiscate personal funds,” he said. “There’s no law that allows for this specific action taken by the government as it stands.”
He advised the federal government to allow people to withdraw their funds from the bank accounts if they’re not willing to link them to BVN, especially since they weren’t identified as proceeds of crime.
Lawyers weigh in
Two legal practitioners interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES Saturday held slightly disparate views on the matter.
Liborous Oshoma, who runs a law firm in Lagos, condemned the order as “far-reaching and despotic” in nature.
“You can’t just drag banks to court and ask them to submit all funds in bank accounts which they’re holding in trust for private individuals,” Mr. Oshoma said.
“The funds are mostly personal deposits. In law, orders are supposed to be specific, directed and enforceable against individuals or institutions,” Mr. Oshoma said. “But we cannot see how the government assumed it could sue banks to enforce orders against individuals who have not been accused of any criminal offences.”
Mr. Oshoma said the Buhari administration did not fathom the possibilities of Nigerians who are serving long prison sentences abroad and may not be in tune with developments in the outside world.
“The despotic tendency of wanting to take what does not belong to them made them forget that people might be in conditions where they cannot come and claim their funds for the next 20 years or more,” Mr. Oshoma said.
“If the government is really desperate to get people’s money because they cannot be found, it should find sensible means of going about it and not resort to steps that are not in consonance with democracy,” he added.
Although he questioned the legal premise of the federal government’s attempt to seize the funds, Inibehe Effiong, also a Lagos-based lawyer, told PREMIUM TIMES the overarching goal of the move was understandable.
“The BVN is a policy of the federal government which is aimed at mitigating financial crimes in the system,” Mr. Effiong said. “The policy was backed by certain financial regulations which make it appropriate for the government to ask for a general freezing order of accounts whose owners cannot be ascertained.”
“But what I cannot understand is the legal structure upon which the policy is standing,” Mr. Effiong said.
Mr. Effiong said authorities should have sought details of bank accounts first, then examine them individually and isolate ones with suspicious traits.
“The government should have stopped at requesting for details of all the bank accounts. but not go as far as getting a blanket approval to withhold all funds.
“If they all the accounts based on their merits, they can sort out the ones with criminal traces and seek their forfeiture,” Mr. Effiong said.
Unarguably one of the most exceptionally unique amazons ever produced by the African continent, the story of Ibukunoluwa Abiodun Awosika is intriguing in many ways. Despite being raised in a male-dominated society, she shines as a star, defying all barriers to become a global force in banking, entrepreneurship, and mentorship.
The Founder of The Chair Centre Group, former Chairperson of First Bank of Nigeria, co-founder and past chairperson of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), Awosika, is a trailblazer and an outstanding motivation to the African girl child that no barrier exists where there is a will. With a net worth of over $18.6 million, according to estimates from Forbes Africa as of 2012, the 61-year-old is worth more than her monetary value, especially when measured by the impact she’s made as an author and motivational speaker.
Awosika, a recipient of many awards from reputable global brands, was a guest on Channels Television’s Amazing Africans programme, during which she shared her journey from ordinary to extraordinary.
Enjoy some excerpts from this interesting interview!
In The Beginning…
I’m very proud of my entire experience at Methodist Girls High School. First, it was a school that had a lot of culture and a lot of values and sought in many ways to influence our minds in an all-round way. I was very active in sports. I was in the school’s relay team from my second year in school. I was pretty fast, as my friends used to call me ‘The Rabbit’. I was very involved in school plays and I used to debate to represent my school in debates and all of that. So, you had a full life; all the other things to do were fun and we were mixed backgrounds so it wasn’t just an elitist school. It was girls from every kind of home but we all got into the class because we were smart and so you learned from each other so it was a good community.
I have a quote here: ‘Seeing my drive as a young entrepreneur, my father used to say I have given birth to this one and if anything happened, he was always present to assist me even if it meant selling his house to pay up any debts’. He never discouraged you and I’m sure that had a great influence on what you felt you were capable of doing when you don’t have to go against your parents you have their full support.
I am a daddy’s girl, no doubts and no apologies. In many ways I think I had a special relationship with my dad, my siblings always say that he was a hardworking man, he believed in the value of working hard but he was also a very simple man in many ways. My father was in many ways the epitome of contentment. A man who worked hard, and pursued his goals but was happy with his estate in life and was comfortable sitting with the President and can sit the next day with the mechanic and have a gist and talk about it.
When we were young if my father’s driver was driving us to school or somewhere, you didn’t have the right to say, ‘My driver’, because you would get told: ‘You don’t have a driver. My driver doesn’t belong to you’. My dad will tell you: ‘He is my driver and you just have the privilege of being driven’.
I didn’t understand when people asked me later in my 20s: ‘Oh you did something, weren’t you afraid it wasn’t a thing that a girl could do? I didn’t understand it because I grew up in a home where we were mainly girls. My dad had mainly girls. Well, they had three boys in their lifetime and one passed and so I have two brothers and there were five girls. So, we were mainly girls and my dad never told us there was something we couldn’t do. Rather, it was about that we could do anything we wanted to do and we got all the support and encouragement to do that.
My mother was the same in many ways. She had left her Cameroonian home at a very young age, she was about 18 when she left to marry the guy she had met. I think my dad had gone on some Man O’ War thing to Cameroon and they met. She had been betrothed to another king or something; her father was the king of their community. She came to Nigeria and they got married. My dad went to England to further his education and my mom was pregnant with me. She had my brother, she was pregnant with me and was waiting to have me when my dad left for school in England and so she waited, had me, and after I think barely a year, she left my brother and myself with my grandmother and she went to join her husband in England.
You’ve described your father as ‘non-traditional’ in more ways than one. He’s also non-traditional when it comes to maybe even viewing women would you say?
In many ways. I had the liberty of expression, that’s the word I would use and I think that went for myself and all my siblings. My dad was strict in terms of values. He was strict especially because we were mainly girls but as he was strict in terms of making sure he kept us on the straight and narrow path, he was a very supportive, liberated parent in terms of expressing ourselves.
It’s not only your parents who passed on some important life lessons, your grandmother also has played a significant role in your life. Could you let us know how she also lent herself to your trajectory and success?
Well, I think my grandmother had the most influence in nurturing my early years because my grandmother was responsible for me until my parents came back from England by the end of ‘68, early ’69, when I was about 6 or 7 years old or thereabouts. So, the early years of my life were my grandmother’s to nurture. They used to call her by my name ‘cos she had only boys and I was the girl she raised. She had a little shop in our family compound area in Ibadan. My family is from the capital of Oyo State in Ibadan and my grandmother used to sell salt. She had this little shop where she used to sell salt and little things. I think maybe my first exposure to business was sitting in my grandmother’s little store and joyfully handing over products to customers.
I had things figured out so when you follow the trail, you will see just how much the hand of God played in my life you know. When I was in secondary school, I thought I wanted to become a doctor and then I found out that Medical School involved working with real dead bodies and I quickly changed my mind. It was that simple for me, I couldn’t imagine myself playing around with dead bodies so I gave up on being a doctor. Then I thought I wanted to be an architect. Anyway, I ended up in the university to study Chemistry but by the end of my first year in Chemistry, I realised I didn’t love it. I could pass Sciences but it wasn’t a love for me and I wasn’t enjoying it. So, I then thought okay I’d like to be a lawyer because everybody thought I’d make a great lawyer. After all, I used to debate so well and I thought they might just be right. I remember going to sit outside the office of the Dean of Law every day for many days until his secretary said to the man: ‘Look you have seen this young lady, she’s been coming here every day’. And then, this elderly professor, he is dead now. He asked me to come in and asked me: ‘What can I do for you young lady?’ And I said: ‘Sir, I’d like to transfer to law next session.’ The man looked at me and had a good laugh and thought: ‘I like your guts. You know if I only take one person next session it will be you but you must pass very well’. I said, ‘Yes sir’. However, that would be my problem because once you pass very well my department will never release me to him and if I didn’t pass well enough, he wouldn’t take me. I had a Catch 99 Situation. Anyway, I resolved the situation myself because by the end of the session, I changed my mind about wanting to be a lawyer. I now decided I would like to be a Chartered Accountant so I could go and work in a bank.
During my youth service, I was a very rich corper because I was very busy; I was presenting a programme on CTV in Kano. They had some commercial programmes that I used to present. I was doing voiceover and commercials. I was running aerobics classes for private clients because I was an athlete even up to my university level. So I was doing everything to open up myself and I was making money doing that.
From Auditing To Furniture-Making
When I decided I didn’t want to do the audit anymore, I came back home and when I came back I didn’t want to sit down. I had been making my own money and now I didn’t want to go back to my parents to start asking for allowances or anything so I wanted any job I could find first. So, the first job I could get was in a Furniture Company, one week after I came back from Youth Service. Now, I just wanted something to kill time I still had my eyes on going to work in the bank and I only lasted three and a half months in that company. First, I realised whilst there why I had thought about studying Architecture ‘cos all the creative part of me came alive and I realized I was in my element in terms of what I was doing there but I didn’t like the value system of the company and the way they did their business.
I realised working there that when they hired the carpenters, they came with their tools, and that the expensive machinery, there were smaller versions of them, and you could rent the use of those machines without even buying them and there are places where you go and do pay-as-you-go for them to process things for you. There were different factors of production available in this space and all I had to do was think of how to bring them together with three carpenters, two sprayers and two upholsters that was the team.
Building A Transgenerational Business
When I was 31 years old and going on 32, I had my second child. I decided then that I would like to build the business to the highest possible level but I wanted to have a life and in wanting to have a life, I made up my mind that the business must be able to survive without me and I wanted to do it in my lifetime and not when I’m dead so I decided that by 50 I was going to be out of running my business every day. By 48, I had a firm come in and consolidate all my businesses as they were into the Group and then picked people to manage the business in different levels. I have the title of CEO (but) right now I just tell them to refer to me as the founder because I don’t run the business. I have a COO who has the CEO responsibilities, running the entire business and she’ll get his title soon enough. For the past so many years now, I have kept my eye on the business. I’m responsible, I’m focused on helping them in terms of trying to identify the right strategy and if we want to get into new businesses but I’ve allowed the Group to try and find its way without me and I’ve always shunned any temptation to go back.
Why?
Because if you really want a business to outlive you it has to be able to live without you.
Bitcoin surpassed the $50,000 mark on Tuesday, marking its highest value in over two years.
Investor optimism surged as anticipation grew regarding broader trading approval in the US, with hopes riding high on potential green lights for cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Despite an initial dip following Washington’s approval signal last month, Bitcoin has rebounded impressively, boasting a 25 percent rally since January 22.
As of the latest data from Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency peaked at $50,328, underscoring the resilience and upward momentum in the crypto market, leaving observers optimistic about its future trajectory.
“Enthusiast buyers bring in more enthusiast buyers pushing prices further up,” Fadi Aboualfa, of Copper Technologies, said.
“The cryptocurrency has momentum on the back of several green weeks and has a large chance of going up further when markets see weekly movements upwards of 10 percent (as we saw last week).”
By 0330 GMT Tuesday, bitcoin had dropped slightly, to $49,950.
While Bitcoin has made an impressive recovery, currently standing above $50,000, it still lags significantly behind its peak value of nearly $69,000 in 2020. This rally signals a bounce-back for the cryptocurrency, which faced turbulent times marked by high-profile scandals and collapses within the crypto industry.
Last year, FTX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, suffered a dramatic downfall, with its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, now confronting potential consequences. Prosecutors have characterised the situation as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” and Bankman-Fried faces the looming threat of up to 110 years in prison.
In November, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao resigned as CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, following both his and the company’s admission of guilt in extensive money laundering violations.
Bitcoin’s upward trajectory is further fueled by optimism surrounding potential interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve this year, as inflation appears to be easing. The cryptocurrency’s value is also influenced by an anticipated supply crunch next year, attributed to the recurring event known as “halving.”
Bitcoin, earned through intricate problem-solving by powerful computers in a process called “mining,” experiences a reduction in reward every four years. With the next “halving” scheduled for April, the limited supply dynamic continues to be a driving force behind Bitcoin’s value surge.
Microsoft joined Apple on Wednesday as a three trillion dollar company, as its big bet on artificial intelligence continued to impress Wall Street.
Now second to Apple as the world’s biggest company by market capitalization, Microsoft’s shares were up 1.31 percent at $404.
Apple remains narrowly in first place at $3.02 trillion after reaching the $3 trillion market capitalization mark for the first time in January 2022.
But it has fallen below the milestone, even briefly losing the pole position as biggest company on the markets when Microsoft briefly overtook the iPhone maker earlier this month.
Microsoft more than any other tech giant is riding the wave of excitement over AI.
The Redmond, Washington-based group has a major partnership with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, that is reportedly worth $13 billion.
Since the arrival of ChatGPT, Microsoft has launched several products enabling companies and individuals to use the capabilities of generative AI, notably via its Bing search engine and Copilot virtual assistant.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in early November 2022, Microsoft shares have gained some 67 percent, with Apple’s up by about 40 percent.
Microsoft publishes its results on January 30.
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