I was happy again last week to learn of another Nigerian like me who would not be bowled over in the head or in the spirit by dirty money simply because many of us literally have to live from hand to mouth nowadays. We have heard of poor taxi drivers who returned millions of Naira forgotten by passengers in their vehicles. We have also heard of poor airport cleaners who handed over large sums of foreign currency discovered in a dust bin. Some thieving persons believe those who have overcome thieving are foolish persons. They do not realise that partakers in thieving who help receive goods stolen from the ceiling of a house are as guilty as the thieves in the cellar. Alaba Alape, from Ojo Onirin, a suburb of Lagos, is that man who made me happy again last week. He told Chans Idehor, Head of Station at Jordan 105.5 FM Radio StationIIdehor in Lagos that recently, he noticed that a N10 million strange lodgment straight into his account and he promptly called his bank to erase it. The bank did without much ado. Alaba had only one minute to respond on the call-in programme which was on another subject. So, we couldn’t hear the details of the transaction. Nevertheless, the tit-bits pulled familiar strings in my heart, and gave me another opportunity to reflect on the fact that money is not life and that a short fall of it in the pocket does not have to cause mental illness and varying degrees of diseases of the mind and body.
At the time Alaba Alape was erasing a strange N10million deposit from his account, I, too, was busy, trying to eliminate a strange N107,000 from mine. Alaba Alape courageously named the bank involved in his N10 million credit splash. If I do not name the two banks involved in my N107,000 transaction, it is probably because they did not disturb my psyche too much. The day after I received it, I went to place my bank on notice. Notification of the N107,000 lodgment was coded. It did not tell me the payee’s name, account number or the town from which the money was posted. The front office staff told me only the forwarding bank could provide the information. Next day, I went to the nearest branch of the forwarding bank. The front office staff, too, kicked me like football back to my Bank branch. Then, I remembered that in Nigeria, if you do not “scatter the ground” in a banking hall, your voice at the loudest pitch, the delivery of your disappointment and demand for civilised service in pungent but eloquent and picturesque English Language, you would only be wasting your time. I knew the cameras would be turned on me. So, I announced my identity to show I was not a run-off -the- mill customer, although, financially, I was light weight. . Some Septuagenarians like me supported me. Younger customers thought I was wasting their precious time. One even to old me … Baba, OTI LO, OWO YEN TI DI A JE MONU which means, Daddy, go enjoy the money, it is free money. He did not know how my mind was working. I thought of the way government officials sometimes did things that dragged innocent persons into their financial scams. What if this was a splitting of the interest from Trader Moneywhich the government is trying to verify and probe with N3b? What if it was “Happiness” money from the embattled Happiness Ministry in a particular state for a vision-challenged person like me. Did I stretch my hand forward for a palliative? In my days as Editoral Director and Editor-in- Chief of The Comet newspaper, did I not receive a Bank statement from a bank I never opened an account with? Did I not get the bank to withdraw the statement only when I was to involve the Police? Before then, as Director of Publications/ Editor-in–Chief of The Guardian newspaper, did I not risk being misrepresented to a dangerous Military Head of State that I rejected a N50,000 gift from him? At a luncheon the next day, was I not one of the only two persons they made to sit with him at the high table, may be, literally, to throw me into the lion’s den? Both the Military Head of State and I froze towards each other. The only woman at the table kept a feeble conversation going. Bayo Onanuga, the then enfant terrible of Nigerian anti-military Journalism, as Editor of The News or of Tempo Magazine, was about to go to town but for serious pleas from me. Did he wish to throw me into the jaws and claws of State Security? Didn’t he know that a cow without a tail shouldn’t bear wounds on its back, otherwise it would have no tail to chase them off? My mother died when I was only nine years old, and my father was a poor retired Policeman who was good at his job but, nevertheless ,suffered promotion setback because he belonged to no cult in the Police, until Inspector-General M.D. Yusuf discovered him. I shared my experience with Alex Ibru, Chairman/Publisher of The Guardian Newspaper who endorsed my action. At the next media briefing in Government House, I walked up to the Deputy Head of State, himself, a military man, after officialdom had calmed.
“Sir, how E DEY ENJOY?”, I asked.
He intensely examined me, and asked: “What do you mean?”
“Sir” I replied, “I mean your elder brother, the Policeman”.
He removed his eye glasses, and asked:
“How did know him?” Again, he asked: You know that name? Few people know him by that name.
Then, I had to reveal my identity. I used to ask him some embarrassing questions at the briefings. Now, I had to remind him his elder brother, E DE ENJOY, was my father’s neighbour at the Police Barracks in Ibara Abeokuta in the 1950s. The Nigerian number 2 Citizen l was speaking with was, in the 1950s, a Yaba College of Technology student, Lagos, who came to spend his school holidays with his brother and kicked football with tiny me in front of the house!
The flashback was hilarious. Now, I had a friend I could turn to should I smell a rat or face danger, especially in the light of the dastardly murder of a top Journalist.
As these events flashed to and fro on my mind, and as I made ground “scattering” protests, the front office staff shifted the engagement to the Manager’s office. Like the Manager of my Bank branch, this one, too, was a woman and well comported but hardly yielding. After wasting some time, she told me the N107,000 came from Ibadan, but declined to name the payee or his or her other identity. I told her she was only trying to protect her customer, who may have been running foul of the law, who could drag her along into a quagmire, if, through the lodgement, fraud had been committed, and the bank benefited from a commission. I told her, also, that should the EFCC find N107,000 too small to be worth its while to track, and I had no money to waste on Police rascality, we would meet at the public arena. Then, she gave me a code. She said my bank had it. I was to ask the manager to use it to track the payment. Puzzling to me was the fact that she, too, had it, since she was giving it to me. Why didn’t she use it right away and save me time, transport fares, energy and anxiety? I would learn later from a former Bank Manager that Bank Managers swear to a secret oath of office to protect their customers. Only state agencies can over run the secret oath.
Half of a loaf of bread is better than none, it is said. I accepted the code, and left. The following day, I was back at my bank branch. I hate to cross the rail-line at Pen Cinema, Agege, as there is yet no pedestrian foot bridge over it. Hon. Mudasiru Obasa , three-time Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly and a potential future governor of the state, is from this constituency where absence of a foot bridge exposes the lives of his constituents to train crushing. I run no car. Were I to engage Pen Cinema from where I live, I would first have to commute to Asade from Abule-Egba area, change two buses and then board a third back to Pen Cinema. That could take at least one hour, instead of about 15 minutes and about N1,800 on a return journey for me and my escort which should cost no more than N600 if I went direct over the foot-bridge. Thus, I had to brave the rail crossing, as I always remember that my classmate in Igbobi College( 1969-70) and fellow student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) in the 1970s, Adedamola Willoughby, was killed by a train at a Lagos rail crossing. Rail crossing points improvised by the citizens are always overcrowded. A little pushing or over pushing may make some persons fall into the pit between two rail lines. OYO (On Your Own) is their case if a train approaches. Adrenaline feels my blood at these crossing points. Too much adrenaline can elevate blood pressure, cause heart diseases, including heart attack, kidney damage and stroke.
Whenever I crossed the rail lines, helped by my escort, I joked to her at the other end that, if I heard a train horn, I would hold her tight on the shirt or hair so she would not abandon me and escape alone to safety. She has a tendency to wish to beat the train. No one dares to in the rain season when the inter-track spaces are flooded with contaminating debris and fecal matter.
Inside the bank, I launched another tug-of-war. The code helped. At the payee’s bank, we learned the N107,000 transfer originated from Ibadan. At my branch, I knew the payee’s account number. The manager was foot dragging when it came to name identification. She couldn’t tell me her bank did not have the original application, I said. She agreed and…waooh, the payee was one of my customers! Why he coded his payment, I still did not know. He was paying for a service we discussed about four months ago. Thereafter, I called him on the telephone many times but was told, each time he was “not reachable”. He, too, had been trying to reach me since he made the payment, but I was “not reachable”. It was on the following day I received a message from MTN that my telephone had been barred from making calls. This is another wahala. I was always at the MTN office to update my account as required by law or the company. I have not defaulted on BVN and NIN. What always happens to their records?
We live in a difficult country where simple things are not easily dispensed with. Why should it take me two whole days to know who paid money into my account? Perhaps I should add the pains of Udeme James in the hands of Access BankShe transferred N20,000 via the ATM of the bank to a fellow customer of the bank who was the wrong recipient. She complained to Access Bank and nothing has been done for two years. She shrugged her shoulders and moved on. Is this the Ease of Doing Business we are clamouring for? I didn’t apply for ATM card because of my vision. Yet Access Bank debits me for using ATM card. I have complained several times to no avail. With GT Bank, I receive someone else’s statement of account on my telephone number. I have been complaining in writing for about two years.My account officer is incommunicado.
Interesting, also, what should be the role of banks in Nigeria’s kidnap industry. The banks are to freeze accounts without BVN and NIN identification. BVN and NIN are to help in the tracking of cash movement in the banking industry. Recently, a family claimed with evidence of bank transfers that it paid kidnappers in the forest N100 million for the release of five kidnapped members. The Police and the Army claimed they did the job.
In respect of the N100million transfer, why did the recipient bank not raise a query when the bank should legally query any deposit over N1million in personal account? Why has the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) not sanctioned the owner of the account? Were the soldiers and the policemen who went to the forest working in tandem with the bank manager and the kidnappers? Why was no single gunshot fired in this miraculous performance of the Army and the Police?
BANKING HEAD-ACHES
Who in Nigeria hasn’t been caused life threatening blood pressure by Nigerian banks? Pa Oye-Igbemo, 84, was a General Manger of the Federal Saving Bank . Two times in his 80s, his Bank accounts were emptied. His bank couldn’t track the thieves. Pa Hyacinth Uzor, former National Sales Manager of Nigerian Breweries Limited (NBL), lost his phone two times. His bank accounts disappeared each time. The second time, one of his friends bought a used phone which turned out to be his stolen phone. Pa Uzor threw the phone into a LAWMA public dust bin. The daughter of one of my father’s tenants in Lagos found her bank account was emptied in Hong Kong. Ukeme Effiong, 22, from Uyo went to an ATM one Friday evening to help her father withdraw money he had just borrowed to repair his pick-up van. The machine swallowed the card. The bank had closed for the day. On her way home, she kept receiving debts alert, and the money was gone. On Monday, first work day of the week, the bank said it did not know how it happened. The Effiongs licked their wounds. I was about to have my bath about eight years ago when my phone announced a debit alert on an account dormant for years. Forty thousand naira was gone. I rushed to the nearest branch. My joker was that money couldn’t exit a dormant account. I began to scream so on the banking floor. Did someone think I had passed on, simply because the account was dormant and I was old? The manager came to see me. About 30 minutes later, he said the alert was an error from their Oyingbo branch. The debit was to be punched against another name and another account but was mistakenly punched against mine. Did our names look alike? I asked. Anyway, the debit and the service charge of N4 were immediately reversed. If you take the trouble to check the arithmetic of your statement of accounts, you would always find errors by fractions of Naira or kobo. This is a tiny sum but a huge sum when added up in your account or for all branch transactions in one day. I like to make all my money transfers on a single cheque and credit my branch with the sum. I noticed one name was always left out. If you do not verify receipt by the would- be recipients, you may lose money. If you go to complain after some days, you would be asked to write another cheque, in which case you would credit the bank with extra, the unattended transfer being surplus cash in the hands of the bank. I learned that, periodically, the books are balanced and the extra fat cut off and shared!
Our finance Controller at THE COMET newspaper, Mr Olujobi, opened my eyes to the on unarithmetic arithmetic of the bank statements. He was a damn honest accountant. One month when we were able to pay junior staff, he did his own arithmetic.Two days or so later, the bank refunded money more than was enough to pay the salaries! Midline bank staff have light fingers because they are largely contract staff whose appointments are not confirmed for years for their output to build business volumes and huge bonuses for their bosses.
If you have not learned that money is not life, Nigerian banks may kill you before your time! This is because each time they degrade your account, your blood pressure may go up and you may suffer from related diseases which may prematurely kill you. When you learn that money is not life, and can learn to ignore your loss, forgive them and look up to life in calm confidence to replenish your loss, if you, too, do not steal in one way or the other from other persons, you may be surprised how well your finances and treasures will grow among the thorns without being pulled down by as little as a grain of sand or a strand of hair… Creation redresses imbalances under THE LAW OF BALANCE. Money does not “answer all things”. It cannot buy LIFE. It is material, and cannot buy life which is immaterial.
