defrauding their customers. In this article the writers highlights a
good number of typical example of this fraudulent activities which is
becoming a norm with Nigerian Banks. Read the article below to learn of
their mode of operations.
Francis Agadaga still remembers events of that fateful evening. He could
have been a widower by now. On September 12, 2014, he rushed to an
Automated Teller Machine point in his neighbourhood at Igando, a Lagos
suburb, to pick some cash with which to take his ailing wife, Sandra, to
the hospital. It was a tough period for the family. The N7, 850 left in
his bank account would go a long way in dousing the situation if he
could get access to the fund. After inserting his card into one of the
ATMs and requesting to withdraw N7, 000, what followed almost left the
father of two in tears.
“It was on a Sunday afternoon and we had just
returned from church when my wife started feeling feverish,” he began.
“Her temperature became so high that we needed to quickly rush her to a
hospital. I didn’t have any money on me at the time and so I hurried to
the nearest ATM point to withdraw the little money I had in the account.
“However,
to my utmost shock, I got a debit alert but did not get any money from
the machine. I was so confused and tensed because I had never
experienced such before and the kind of situation on ground then was a
matter of life and death,” he said.
After waiting for a while to
see if the cash would pop out of the machine, Agadaga left the place
heartbroken and more tensed than he ever was. It took the kindness of
few neighbours and friends to raise the money needed to save his wife’s
life at a private clinic she was rushed to for treatment.
“It was
my neighbours and friends who helped to raise N8, 000 with which I took
her to the hospital where she was given injections and drugs. The next
day, I went to my bank to complain and bank officials promised to
reverse the debit after I had filled a form.
“I went back there
after about a week later to find out why the money had not been reversed
as promised. I was told their system had some technical problems, which
they were trying to fix. I decided to give them some more time for the
problem to be rectified. But after going there several times and being
told the same thing, I left everything to God.
“Since that period
till now, my N7, 000 has not been refunded. If not for my neighbours
and friends who helped with some cash that day, maybe my wife could have
died from that sickness,” the disgruntled young father told Saturday
PUNCH.
Like Agadaga, Ejiro Dumuje, is still waiting for her money
to be reverted back to her account four months after she was wrongly
debited by an ATM in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital. Dumuje had
visited the ancient city to purchase bales of Adire fabric to resell in
Edo and Delta states where she shuttles frequently when she suddenly ran
out of cash. She headed for the nearest ATM point to collect some
money. After paying her initial request of N40, 000, the young lady
decided to pick additional N5, 000 from the machine. That was where
things went wrong. A debit alert was sent to her phone but the machine
never paid that money. Four months on, Dumuje is still waiting after
several complaints at her bank.
“I have been to my bank more than
three times to complain and ask why my money has not been refunded,”
she said. “The people at the customer care just try to calm me by
assuring that the case was still under investigation and that a refund
would be effected as soon as possible. This is the fourth month and I
have not seen my money. I am tired of going to complain. If they like,
they can pay and if not, I leave them to God,” the visibly enraged lady
said.
Bayo Odesina was in his office in Lagos in December 2013
when he got a debit alert of N250, 000 on his phone. It was an alert for
an online transaction carried out through his MasterCard in Flushing,
New York, United States of America. Agitated by the development, Odesina
phoned his account officer to complain about the development and
followed it up by contacting his lawyers to write the bank.
The
financial institution replied and asked for a three-month period to
properly investigate the matter. After three months, the bank sent a
letter to Odesina’s home, accusing him of negligence and carelessness
for the act. According to the bank, he had compromised the Personal
Identification Number of his ATM card, thereby allowing fraudsters
access to it in the process. Meanwile, it was only a few days after
Odesina had approached his bank to block his ATM card after it went
missing. The bank simply absolved itself of any blame in the act.
CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele
Odesina’s
lawyers wrote the bank again, threatening to take the matter to court
if their client’s money was not refunded. In response, the bank
requested for more time, apparently trying to frustrate the matter. One
year passed and nothing changed. Odesina, a media practitioner, wrote
the bank’s corporate affairs unit, this time, introducing himself as a
journalist and highlighting how much damage a publication of the matter
could do to the bank’s image. That same day, he was contacted by the
head of the corporate affairs unit, who strongly assured him that his
money would be refunded in a few days time after talking him out of
publishing the matter in the newspaper where he worked. Three days
later, an alert did come on his phone. His money had been refunded after
about 13 months of intense struggle.
“Their plan was to make me
forget about the money,” Odesina told Saturday PUNCH earlier in the
week. “They kept using all sorts of delay tactics just to frustrate me
so I could give up on the money. If it were N5, 000, maybe I would have
forgotten about it, but N250, 000 is not something I could just let go
like that because it was a lot of money.
“My only saving grace
was that I am a journalist. The bank already accused me of being
careless with my ATM PIN. They also said that I had released vital
information of the card to fraudsters who then went ahead to make online
purchases with it in the US. The card in question had got missing and I
made a request for it to be blocked, so how could that same card be
used to make any transaction if not through the help of an insider in
the bank who knew how to bypass certain security systems put in place?
“When
I realised that the bank was not going to pay my money back, I
contacted the people at the corporate affairs unit and made them
understand what damage a news of the entire drama could do to the image
of their bank. That same day they called me and pleaded with me to give
them a few days and that they would pay me back my money. Three days
later, I got an alert of N250, 000 on my phone. That was one year and
one month after the initial incident. Imagine if that was all I had in
the bank or I had not pursued the matter vigorously, I could have lost
that much to the bank. I have since closed down my account with the
bank,” he said.
A young factory worker in Akure, Ondo State, Yemi
Onanuga, was stunned recently when N11, 300 was deducted from his
account by his bank for an insurance scheme the financial institution
claimed he subscribed to earlier. The money was part of funds he had
been saving for months to establish a salon.
“I was shocked when I
received the debit notification because I never subscribed to any
insurance scheme at any period. It took several months of complaint and
repeated visits to the bank before my money was paid back into my
account. It was a terrible experience that really affected me in several
ways,” Onanuga told Saturday PUNCH.
Illegal deductions as these
are now a common feature despite series of complaints from many bank
customers across the country. While some have been lucky to have their
funds returned into their accounts, others continue to lament in vain.
For them, it is a refund that might never come.
Three weeks ago,
Amarachi Ejindu went to an ATM at the Akowonjo area of Lagos to withdraw
some money. Though, her money was reversed back after receiving a debit
alert initially for the transaction, the N65 ATM charge was not. It
took a while before Ejindu noticed this and when she did, no reasonable
explanation came to her mind. Why should she be charged for a
transaction that was never completed or even occurred, she wondered. Why
was the N65 not refunded along with the amount reversed? Who does that
money go to? What does the CBN say about this? The questions kept
running on her mind.
“I was really concerned about this that I
had to call my bank’s customer care on the phone,” Ejindu opened. “It is
a small amount but then I imagined why I should be charged for a
transaction that never took place. It sounded like a rip off to me. I
called the customer care people and they could not give a satisfactory
explanation for this. They told me to make a formal complaint and that
the matter would be looked into. I did that but they have yet to refund
that money. Indeed, N65 could look like a small amount but think about
how many customers would have experienced the same problem in a day and
then see how much the banks could be making off people without their
knowledge,” she said.
EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde
In
Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, Abdullahi Lawal, an undergraduate, did
not also get his N65 back after a cash reversal on his account two
months ago. It was on a Friday evening and the 23-year-old had visited a
cash point in the city to pick some amount to transport him to Ibadan
in Oyo State where a cousin was getting married that weekend. During the
transaction, Lawal was debited N4, 000 which was soon reversed back
into his account. Like Ejindu, he noticed that what came back to him was
N65 less. There was nobody he could complain to, so he forgot about the
matter and moved on.
“When I noticed that N65 was still missing
from my account after the reversal, I decided to let go as it was a
small amount and moreover, there was nobody I was going to complain to
that day. If it were a bigger amount, of course I would have gone to the
bank to complain. I have forgotten about it because I am not sure the
bank will refund the money,” Lawal said.
Apart from the N65 ATM
charge, customers are also made to pay for multiple Short Message
Service alerts for a single transaction on their bank accounts, losing
more of their funds in the process. Many of these charges are not even
communicated to the unsuspecting customers by the financial
institutions.
A social economist, Kabiru Tiamiyu, told Saturday
PUNCH that with all kinds of deductions being carried out in the name of
charges by Nigerian banks, it is almost impossible for customers,
especially those running savings accounts to get back the exact amount
they kept in the banks.
According to Tiamiyu, one of the easiest
ways banks milk unsuspecting customers is through SMS. He said banks
still charge N4 per SMS sent to a customer when even bulk SMS providers
in the country offer the service for less than N1.00. Rip-off of this
kind, he said must be resisted by customers.
Following a
directive by the Central Bank of Nigeria, bank customers began paying
N65 for cash withdrawals made on other banks’ ATMs from September 1,
2014. The re-introduction of the charges came almost two years after the
CBN and the Deposit Money Banks cancelled the N100 ATM charge in
December 2012. According to the apex bank, the charge would become
effective on the fourth ATM withdrawal in a month, thus making the first
three withdrawals on other banks’ machines within the month free.
But
financial experts think that the N65 deduction should only apply to
valid withdrawals. According to Godfrey Obiefule, an investment banker,
returned cheque debits, bank-generated charges and loan liquidation are
transactions that ought not to attract Commission on Turnover. He
posited that reversals or mistakes made by banks should not attract
charges to the depositors.
In 2013, the CBN disclosed that it
recovered over N9bn excess charges deducted from customers’ accounts by
commercial banks across the country within a one year period. The
controller of the Abeokuta branch of the apex bank at the time, Mr.
Olumuyiwa Joawo, made the revelation during a consumer sensitisation
workshop organised by the financial body in the Ogun State capital.
Two former bank workers arrested for fraud being taken to court
Two former bank workers arrested for fraud being taken to court
Head,
Security and Risks Management, Credit Dynamics, Kingsley Ochefu, wants
customers to be more vigilant in their dealings with financial
institutions and always complain whenever they notice any discrepancies
on their accounts.
“Banks should let their customers know their service charges for accounts.
Deputy
Chairman, Committee of E-banking Industry Heads in Nigeria, Mr. Dele
Adeyinka, told Saturday PUNCH that the N65 ATM charge is shared by
several parties regardless of whether the transaction succeeds or not.
“The
N65 in question is shared by several parties. Out of the amount, N10
goes to the issuer of the card while N55 goes to the bank that owns the
machine.
“The truth is that whether a dispense error occurs or
not, there has been a communication link, the switch has been touched
and the owner of the ATM incurred some cost to set up the machine. That
communication has to be paid for because there are implicating charges
for the process involved.
“For a customer such could be a failed
transaction but in the real sense a communication link between the ATM
and your bank had occurred, switch had been touched and these services
attract charges whether or not the request was eventually completed. A
service has been offered technically.
“But this is the fault of
nobody. It is simply as a result of infrastructural failure in our
society. Banking transactions rely on a lot of infrastructure to thrive
especially stable power supply. This is part of the reasons why the
situation persists,” he said.
On the issue of charging customers
for multiple SMS on a particular transaction, Adeyinka said it was wrong
for banks to do such as it was not the fault of the customers.
According to him, customers who experience such should make formal
complaints at their banks or petition the CBN who would surely look into
it.
CBN spokesman, Mr. Ibrahim Muazu, told Saturday PUNCH that
whoever feels cheated by their bank should write the regulatory
financial institution and their grievances would be looked into
immediately if the case is valid. Like Adeyinka, he explained why the
N65 ATM charge does not return back to a customer’s account even when a
transaction is not completed. He disclosed that as long as a
communication link has had been established between the two banks
involved, charges are definitely going to apply.
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