Port Harcourt—Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Major General Barry Tariye Ndiomu (rtd) has approved payment for not less than seven hundred and seventy-five (775) delegates with Bank Verification Number (BVN) issues, whose accounts were recently put on hold.
The Amnesty office said a new portal is also being created to address delegates with multiple accounts linked to their BVNs.
According to a statement signed by the Special Adviser on Media to the Interim Administrator, Freston Akpor, Ndiomu has also expressed serious concern over the BVN issue and had earlier assured that the BVN anomaly which has been there before his assumption of office will be tackled once and for all.
According to the statement, affected delegates of the BVN-related issues are urged to remain calm as the verification committee has already cleared a minimum of 775 cases that are already receiving payments following approval by Ndiomu.
The statement reads in part: “It is important to note that the verification committee is working by the provisions of the regulatory framework put in place by the Central Bank of Nigeria which in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee, had earlier deployed a centralised Bank Verification Number (BVN) System in February 2014 as part of an overall strategy of ensuring the effectiveness of “Know Your Customer” (KYC) principle to promote safe, reliable and efficient payments system.
“The BVN system is to address the increasing incidence of frauds and to enhance public confidence in the banking industry.
The statement further hinted that “the process is aimed at using BVN to deter, prevent, detect, and mitigate the risks of fraud in the banking industry and every customer is meant to have a personal BVN number linked to his or her bank account giving each customer in the Nigerian banking industry, a unique identifier number. “
