By Innocent Orok
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that nine commercial banks witheld a total of N530billion welfare scheme under the former CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele. The CBN governor Olayemi Cardoso is likely to request for the reimbursement of the retained funds.
This followed the temporary halt of all CBN support funds by the current governor of the central bank, Olayemi Cardoso. Currently, there are nine banks that still hold more than N530 billion in unutilized intervention funds on their financial books.
After reviewing the recent financial statements of the banks, it was observed that they still retained funds received from the Central bank designated for distribution to recipients.
The listed banks are Wema Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Access Bank Plc, Sterling Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, First City Monument Bank, Fidelity Bank, Zenith Bank, and United Bank of Africa.
Zenith Bank leads with the largest sum of intervention funds, amounting to N157.81 billion, Fidelity Bank N98.85bn, Access Bank N94.63bn, Sterling Bank N80.34bn and
GTB N52.39bn
Others are,UBA N20.87bn,
FCMB N13.17bn, Stanbic IBTC N11.49bn and Wema Bank has N1.83bn.
