The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, said it returned up to N65 billion wrongly imposed excess charges on bank customers’ account s over the past seven years.
The apex bank governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, gave this hint at the Bank Customers Association of Nigeria’s (BCAN’s) 3rd Biennial Bank Customers Summit with the theme ‘Rights and Obligations of Bank customers’ held in Lagos.
Represented at the forum by the Acting Director Consumer Protection Department, Mr. T.Y Ahmed, the governor disclosed specifically that “between 2012 and July 2018 we have returned over N65 billion and I can tell you some customers and I mean individuals has got as much as N3 billion.
“I hope you are aware that for now your complaint shouldn’t be more than six years old. Why are we saying not more than six years old is to look at other relevant status. We have the Anti money laundering Act, we have the Evidence Act”, the banker added.
In her paper on customers rights and obligations on loans and advances, a Council member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) Mrs. Yvonne Isichie, canvassed the need for service charters so that when customers go into any bank they know what they are asking for and then know the standards on which their expectations should be defined.
She therefore charged the leadership of the BCAN to take up the responsibility of developing the service charter so that in the next two years bank customers can lay hold of it.
Responding, President BCAN, Dr. Uju Ogubunka, assured that the association would do just that, adding that this will be done by requesting all banks to submit their charters and if they don’t have any, the association will expect them to submit one.
He clarified further: “We will not stop at that. When we get theses charters if we do and hope we may. We will subject them to scrutiny to confirm that the contents would satisfy the needs of bank customers.”
The immediate past President of the CIBN and current Dean of Faculty at Caleb University, Prof. Segun Ajibola, stressed the need for a good banker- customer relationship and cautioned on the dangers of involving minors in banking relationship and operations
He said: “At times we have this confusion. We know that a bank is regulated by law. CIBN Act 2007, Banks and Other Financial Institutions (OFIs) Act 2005 and so many others define what constitute a bank. There is one problem with what constitute a banker. Within the banking hall you enter there are bankers and there are bank workers, so you run into problems when you rely on bank workers.
“Somebody who has not been trained in arts and science of banking pretending to be a banker, searching the interest of customers and most problems we have today even when they are least to little come out of fair ignorance on the part of those who should know but they don’t know.
“We must remember in an environment like ours where so many things are being redefined it is a quite note of a bank contract that you must attain the age of majority. Therefore in Nigeria today anybody that is below the age of 18 cannot valuably hold a bank account. Then you will ask me, we all open accounts for our children in school. Banks go round now to say children account, this account, that account. You know the law is so dormant that is why we say the law is a horse. Nobody will raise any issue but let there be a problem. That child cannot sue that bank because any account that is opened below the age of 18 is not recognized in law.
“If anything goes wrong that bank cannot sue that child. The juvenile court system in Nigeria is still on a confused state so when the bank is opening accounts with school children and so on and so forth and there are problems. Beware”, Ajibola cautioned.
