While it is no longer news that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had directed banks to start the process of deducting cybersecurity a 0.5 per cent levy from banking transactions to be administered by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), there are however some transactions exempted from the levy.
While the levy is to be charged on all electronic transactions and applied at the point of transfer origination, the CBN in an appendix to the circular, listed 16 transactions exempted from the levy.
According to the banking regulator, these transactions include: Loan disbursements and repayments; Salary payments; Intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer; Intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank; Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) instructions to their correspondent.
Other transactions exempted from the levy are: Banks Interbank placements; Banks’ transfers to CBN and vice-versa; Cheques clearing and settlements; Letters of Credits (LCs); Banks’ recapitalization-related funding; Savings and deposits including transactions involving long-term investments such as Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Commercial Papers; Government Social Welfare Programs transactions e.g Pension payments; Non-profit and charitable transactions including donations to registered nonprofit organizations or charities; Educational Institutions transactions, including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions and transactions involving the bank’s internal accounts such as suspense accounts, clearing accounts, profit and loss accounts, inter-branch accounts, reserve accounts.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday directed banks to start the process of deducting cybersecurity levy to be administered by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA).
The financial regulator also said the deduction and collection of the cybersecurity levy is a sequel to the enactment of the 2024 Cybercrime (prohibition, prevention etc) Amendment Act of 2024. For clarity, if you transfer N50,000, a 0.5 percent of the levy — which amounts to N250 — will be deducted from your account.
Meanwhile, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, asked Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to direct the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to withdraw the cybersecurity levy on Nigerians as it patently violates the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 and the country’s international human rights obligations and commitments.
In a statement issued by its deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, the group further tasked the president to stop Nuhu Ribadu alongside the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) from implementing Section 44 and other repressive provisions of the Cybercrimes Act 2024 as it flagrantly violates the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Nigeria is a state party.
