I returned home from work the other day and met my semi-literate neighbour fuming. In his hand was the exercise book of his 10-year-old son and pupil of a popular primary school in the area. “Nonsense! Arrant nonsense!” he yelled repeatedly. The son’s answer to a social studies question was marked wrong by his teacher and the poor man was livid with rage.
The pupil had been asked the full meaning of ATM and he put it as Automated Trouble Machine. The teacher insisted that the correct answer is Automated Teller Machine, but my neighbour believed he was being mischievous. “What are those empty contraptions if they are not automated troubles? They are either permanently out of service or they tell you they cannot dispense money after you have spent hours on the queue,” he fumed. Not even my intervention persuaded him that his ugly experience could not give his son the liberty to change the meaning of ATM from what everyone else knows it to be.
Of course, I knew where the poor man’s anger derived from, as I have also fallen victim to the machines on numerous occasions. While the ineffectiveness of ATMs has been a general problem, my experience with the ones on the premises of a branch of a first generation bank with which I operate an account in Ota, Ogun State has been particularly traumatising. Ironically, there are no fewer than six ATMs on the bank’s premises. A notice at the entrance advises any customer withdrawing an amount less than N100,000 to use the machines, but it is almost as sure as daybreak that they will disappoint.
It must have been a policy at the bank that only one of the half a dozen machines must function at any particular time. Hence you will always find a queue of customers as long as the unaided eye can see. And some of those who wait for endless hours are there to withdraw sums that can barely take them home. Customers’ plight has been compounded by the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria to outlaw the N100 service charge imposed on those who use the ATMs of other banks than the ones they operate accounts with. Apparently in protest against the CBN directive, most of the ATMs of banks that proved to be more efficient in the past now tactically decline payment non-domiciled customers by telling them that the issuers of their ATM cards are inoperative.
In the circumstance, the customers of most of the first generation banks are more or less restricted to the largely inefficient ATMs of their banks. I experienced one of my most frustrating moments on a Saturday last month. My wife needed to make a pot of soup and approached me for money. Realising that I did not have a dime on me, and knowing that the ATMs at my bank are designed to frustrate and disappoint, I approached a branch of one of the second generation banks to use their ATM, but it told me that the issuer of my card was inoperative. I went round the branches of some other banks, but the situation was the same. Left with no choice, I went to the branch of the bank I operate an account with and met a queue of desperate customers numbering more than 50.
Left with no choice, I joined the long queue and waited for my turn. But I soon realised that the only machine that functioned could only dispense N1,000 per transaction. The customers had agreed among themselves that no individual should perform more than three transactions, which meant that the maximum amount any of us could withdraw was N3,000. I remained patient on the queue only for the machine to indicate that it could no longer dispense cash, with just two people left in my front. Of course, I returned home crestfallen. But my real frustration occurred two days later when I checked my account’s balance and realised that one of the ATMs I tried earlier had debited my account without dispensing cash.
Last week, one of the ATMs of the bank in question added embarrassment to the streak of pains it has inflicted on me. I had gone there to withdraw the sum of N20,000. Unknown to me, one of the N1,000 notes dispensed by the machine was fake. I did not realise it until I got to a filling station and paid the attendant after buying N3,000 fuel. But as I made to enter the car and drive off, the young lady approached me and said, “Excuse me sir.” She handed out one of the N1,000 notes I had just given to her. I thought that I had overpaid her by N1,000 and she was being honest to return the money. But with disarming calmness, she said, “No sir, you did not overpay. I’m returning the money because it is fake!”
The embarrassment can only be imagined. Fake N1,000 note from ATM? Exasperated, I threatened to return to the bank the following morning to challenge them for loading fake naira notes in their ATM. But my wife reminded me that I could be setting myself up for further embarrassment because I had no way of proving that the controversial note was dispensed by their machine. Before I knew it, she said, I would be the one to prove to the police that I am not a member of a fake naira syndicate. I saw the sense in her counsel and backed out. As I write, the money lies at my bedside, untouchable and “unspendable”.
Happily, there have been reports of plans by the House of Representatives to probe the ugly trend. The lawmakers will also do well to take a holistic look at the ineffectiveness of the machines, which informed sources say are always grounded because they are bought in the refurbished form after they had been used and discarded by foreign banks. Without any shade of doubt, the ATM is one of the greatest human inventions designed to ease the pains associated with withdrawing money over the counter. But in Nigeria, it seems to be adding more to customers’ troubles than solving them.
