By Tunde Austins –
Bank transactions for which the account holders claim not to be responsible is a common occurrence to the Nigeria banking customers.
Not that this is common to Nigerians alone as it happens in other parts of the world because there are fraudsters in every country; simply put, there are fraudsters everywhere.
In recent days there has been a marked increase in the number of complaints from Nigeria banks customers over transactions in the customers’ account for which they claim not to be responsible.
This is not only a security issue, but also breaches the trust between the banks and customers as the mere complaint that the safe has a hole creates a mutual mistrust between them and the financial institution.
Last month, my nephew in Lagos paid twenty five thousand naira into my niece’s account while she was in Benin City.
She was notified by an alert on her phone, a few minutes after the payment was made. She went to her bank about 45 minutes later, to try to withdraw funds from the account, but was told, she had no money there.
When he told the Teller about the money her brother paid into her account and the subsequent alert she received, the bank official confirmed the payment into the account, but gave her a shocking news: ‘’but you withdrew the money a few minutes ago at a branch in Ibadan.”
In disbelief, she said: “I am here in Benin; my bankcard is with me, how I could have withdrawn the money in Ibadan? “ To date, she never got her money back.
Most Nigerians that I know would rather keep their monies at home instead of subjecting themselves to endless lines and the dysfunctional security (tubes) scan they have to go through to get into the banks.
Because of the security issues in the country, Nigerians are left with no choice but to deposit their hard-earned money in the banks(where it is purportedly safer) to keep it away from gun wielding, hardened young men who have found robbing people of their possessions a lucrative occupation.
Now, to find that the only hope of securing your money is not secured after all is a big problem for the Nigerian banking industry and hard working customers.
The mutual mistrust comes from the banks not believing the customers’ story of not being responsible for the transactions and the customer believing that the banks are getting away with frauds.
As earlier stated, frauds can happen in any country but how the complaints are handled says a lot about the culture of accountability or the lack thereof.
What happened to the mantra that a business exists because of the customer or the customer is always right, or innocent until proven otherwise?
I believe very strongly that by now the Nigerian banking industry should have risen above the level of mediocrity at which they are still operating.
By now, the Nigerian banks should be able to prove within 24 hours of a complaint, that the customer did or did not perform a contested or disputed transaction.
What is the use of computerization if we cannot investigate transaction footprints to determine if the transaction was genuine or not?
What is the need of declaring those high profits if hardening the banking system network against internal and external aggression or attack is not a priority?
With computerization comes the attendant problem of network security; no wonder why programmers, ethical hacker Network and Cyber security professionals are in high demand in the Information Technology industry today.
What efforts are the banks making to protect the depositors? Should customers just accept their losses because the banks say so? Can the banks actually perform better in the protection of the customers’ deposit?
The foregoing are questions that we need to answer, or else we would take it that, the fraudsters are actually the bankers themselves.
Is this a case of a thief being the keeper of the purse like Judas Iscariot?
If the Nigerian banks are declaring as much profit as they are doing these days, with all these problems, you can imagine how much more they can make if they can just get banking right for once.
The government on the other hand is about protecting the big businesses, there is nobody looking out for the customers or the common man. The customers have no recourse after their complaint to the banks.
The customer loses out almost all the time, except where he or she is one of those Nigerians with deep pockets and connection to people in authorities.
This situation is not good for the Nigerian banking industry, it is not good for the Nigerian economy, it is not good for Nigeria’s already battered image, and it is not good for those who have lost their hard-earned money in the banks where they thought it would be safe.
