The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has linked 13,417 individuals to fraudulent activities on a centralised Person of Interest (POI) Portal as part of its sustained drive to frontally tackle all forms of digital payment frauds in the country.
The portal, which was jointly developed by the NIBSS in collaboration with the CBN, security agencies, and other key industry stakeholders, now has the names and photographs of individuals suspected to be involved in financial crimes.
The portal, which has been operational since 2019, was opened with the aim of closing loopholes that had for years allowed fraudsters to conduct their despicable cts undetected across financial institutions.
Commenting on the latest initiative, the Managing Director of the NIBSS, Premier Oiwoh, reported that whereas the number of reported fraud cases had been dropping over the past five years, the value of financial losses remained a major concern of the NIBSS and its partner.
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The banking expert disclosed that the actual fraud losses totalled about N17.67 billion in 2023 and surged to N52.26 billion in 2024, due to a single incident involving N31.1 billion at one financial institution
Oiwoh disclosed that in 2025, banking losses significantly dropped in 2025 due to stronger control mechanisms by the NIBSS and improved partnership with the CBN, stakeholders in the banking system and security agencies.
Based on geopolitical incidents, he hinted that Lagos State recorded the highest concentration of fraud cases, largely due to its status as Nigeria’s commercial hub just as Abuja also recorded increase, while other states continued to feature in reported incidents.
The NIBSS’ boss further clarified that by transaction channel powered by social engineering technique of the fraudsters, fraud was most prevalent in e-commerce and internet banking, followed by point-of-sale (PoS), mobile, and web-based platforms.
Oiwoh rated insider involvement as the biggest threat to Nigeria’s financial system as the NIBSS’ investigations confirmed high levels of insider abuse, including cases involving former bank employees.
Despite the menace, he maintained that coordinated action across the industry had been yielding desired results as the joint efforts by stakeholders last year alone helped to avert an estimated N20 billion in potential fraud losses.
The NIBSS boss, however, expressed concern over the growing trend of non-reporting of financial frauds by financial institutions, noting that the reported cases declined by about 34% in Q4 2025.
Describing the situation as unacceptable, the banking expert pointed out that failure by banks and other financial institutions (OFIs) to report fraud incidents will encourage the fraudsters to intensify their nefarious activities across the financial system.
Oiwoh reported that in several cases investigated in 2025, many fraudters were able to secure new jobs because their previous offences were not disclosed by the banks and OFIs.
He explained that in order to strengthen fraud monitoring and prevention in the banking system, the NIBSS and the CBN had integrated multiple centralised data systems, including industry watchlists, politically exposed persons (PEP) databases, and customer account repositories into the POI Portal.
This is even as he explained that in order to strengthen the technology architecture, the National Payment Stack, launched last year under a CBN directive and built to ISO 20022 standards, incorporated advanced AI-driven security, making every instant payment risk-scored, with suspicious transactions flagged in real time.
Oiwoh also confirmed that cybersecurity companies and digital intelligence providers were supporting banks with advanced AI tools even as regulatory and security collaboration had been intensified amid the ongoing CBN recertification exercise.
To consolidate on the successes recorded on the fraud prevention drive by the NIBSS, CBN and other agencies, he charged the banks and OFIs to adopt measures such as staff profiling, job rotation, mandatory leave, lifestyle audits, and intelligence sharing.
Oiwoh maintained that compromising on cybersecurity would expose the nation’s financial ecosystem to high risks, which should be prevented by all stakeholders in the financial system.
