A part of customers’ funds with Wema Bank Plc has been allegedly lost to a system glitch and the financial institution is making efforts to recover and credit it back to the owners.
Already, the lender has approached a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos for a preservative order mandating about 26 financial institutions to return the funds, about N888.3 million, traced to accounts domiciled with the bank.
Wema Bank, in an affidavit deposed by its Head of Special Review and Investigation, Mr Kehinde Buari, said the money was withdrawn from its accounts without authorisation during an operational failure in bank’s core banking system on January 16, 2025.
The lender informed the court that after the unfortunate incident, it instituted a probe, which showed that some recipients of the funds attempted to move, hide, or obscure the origin of the money by transferring it across multiple accounts.
According to the bank, the financial institutions, where the funds were transferred to, were swiftly alerted about the glitch and the fraudulent transactions and were urged to restrict and sequester the affected accounts.
It said these banks were cooperative as they helped to freeze N888.3 million after the support of the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to track the funds.
The old generation bank, led by Mr Moruf Oseni, said it now seeks a directive of the court to have the money and others that may further be recovered returned to its customers’ accounts.
It also begged the court to mandate the placement of affected account holders on the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Credit Risk Management System and other financial watchlists through their Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs) until the full recovery of the lost funds.