Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele, on Tuesday said he and his team at the apex could not find any trace of alleged missing N89 trillion stamp duty, expressing concern over the bogus allegation of the missing money.

Addressing reporters at the end of a two-day meeting of the CBN’s Monetary Policy Committee in Abuja, Mr Emefiele said only N370.686bn was collected by all the commercial banks from stamp duty from 2016 to date.

From that total amount raised, Mr Emefiele said the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) had disbursed the sum of N226.45 billion (N226,451,720,158.88) to the Federal Account Allocation Committee account for disbursement to the three tiers of government.

According to CBN data, the balance in the stamp duty account is N144.2 billion (N144,234,595,346.40).

Emefiele said CBN had to contact the banks to provide details of how much they have collected from stamp duty from 2016 to date.

“The report you have in CBN is this: that stamp duty collected to date is N370,686,315,505.28 billion.

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“Out of that, FIRS has disbursed through FAAC N226,451,720,158.88 billion. And the balance in the account in CBN is N144,234,595,346.40 billion,” he stated.

Mr. Emefiele disclosed that First Bank Plc recorded the highest collection of N71.6 billion in seven years.

“So, I truly don’t know where N89 trillion is,” he added.

A federal lawmaker, Gudaji Kazaure, had accused the CBN governor and the bank of illegally withholding a whopping N89 trillion stamp duty levy, an allegation that had created much controversy in the system.

“If there is any uncollected stamp duty money, we will force the banks to pay,” Emefiele assured while stating that his team at the apex bank would make sure every money raised from stamp duty is remitted to the federation account for the purpose of accountability.