The House of Representatives on Tuesday took significant steps to address cases of fraudulent deductions by commercial banks from customers’ accounts.
This followed the passage for the second reading a “Bill for an Act to amend the Banking and Other Financial Institutions Act 202 and Other for Other Related Matters,” sponsored by the member representing Mushin II Federal Constituency, Lagos State, Mr Moses Fayinka.
Leading the debate on the general principles of the bill, Fayinka lamented the frequent cases of withdrawals from customers’ accounts, noting that billions of naira have been lost in the process.
He said, “There is an alarming rise of bank fraud or unauthorised withdrawal of deposit funds in Nigeria. In the banking industry, about 101,801 cases were reported in 2022 and 48,703 cases were reported in 2023, making bank customers lose several billions of naira.
“This Bill is in consideration to the uprising of various financial crimes within the country, with many of such passing through financial institutions or we can call it the commercial banking system.
‘We all know that virtually all banking transactions are done electronically, which means that transactions can either be ATM, POS, direct cash transfer, fast cash and many others, in which many bank customers have fallen victims and have lost their hard-earned fortune without help from any side.”
According to him, the objective of this bill is “To stop illegal funds transactions where monies are moved from the customer’s account without the authorisation of the customer for such transaction to take place; to stop banks from the cover-up of such syndicates without reporting such action to the receiving bank and the police for necessary actions and for both the paying and receiving banks to get the culprits arrested and prosecuted and to pay all necessary bills in the course of the recovery processes.”
The proposed law also seeks to make a refund back to the victim’s account without charges.
Contributing to the bill, the member representing Damboa/Gwoza/Chibok Federal Constituency, Borno State, Ahmed Jaha condemned the multiple deductions, saying “Even today, people in the National Assembly saw debit alerts that they did not know where it came from. We ignore these deductions because they are negligible amounts but when you put it together, it runs into millions of Nigeria.”
Also speaking, a member of the House from Kaduna State, Mohammed-Bello El-Rufai called on the Central Bank of Nigeria to impose stiffer penalties on commercial banks found to be imposing charges on their customers.
