June 7,2022

In February, Damilola Adeyera, a freelance journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), won an award of $10,000 to develop AwaCountry, a civic-tech project aimed at democratising access to social justice. 

Through his innovation, Adeyera had emerged one of the four winners in this year’s Festival of Urgent Reinventions, a brainchild of The Great Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in the United States of America.

GTBANK RECEIVES PRIZE MONEY

Adeyera told FIJ that when the foundation eventually disbursed the prize money to him in May, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) branch in Sango-Ota, Ogun State, refused to hand it over to him in hard currency.

“After the competition, the organisation sent a mail to me, asking me to provide an account so that the prize money could be sent to me,” Adeyera said.

“Since I currently do not have a domiciliary account, I decided to use my brother’s domiciliary account to receive the money.

“On May 23, Olawale Modupe, my brother’s account officer, called him to say some money was about to enter his account. He added that it was sent in naira and not in dollars.”

Adeyera said his brother instantly suspected foul play from the account officer’s comments and quickly reached out to him for confirmation

My brother immediately called me to confirm whether the money I was expecting was in naira or in dollars. I told him it was in dollars. I was not the only winner that was announced during the competition,” Adeyera said.

“Three other professionals also emerged as winners in different categories and after reaching out to them, they confirmed to me that they all received their prizes in dollars.

“I reached out to The Great Foundation over the issue and they confirmed to me that the money was sent in dollars. They also added that their bank confirmed to them that there were no issues when the money was transferred.

“However, as of June 2, Olawale was still insisting that the money was sent in naira, and not in dollars. This forced me to send a mail to the organisation a second time on June 3, and they once again confirmed to me that the money was sent in dollars.

“This means GTBank are the ones that have refused to pay me in dollars like they should.”

GTBANK’S EXPLANATION

When FIJ contacted Olawale Modupe, he said he received the directive to tell Adeyera to provide a naira account from the head office.

“On May 23, I got a mail from our head office, saying that the customer was sent N4,025,764. The account number that was stated by the customer was in dollars, whereas, the currency that came in was in naira. This means there is a mismatch. It also means we cannot credit naira into a dollar account,” Olawale said.

“I was told to immediately reach out to him (Adeyera) to ask if he could provide a naira account so he could be credited. But he insisted that the money he was expecting was in dollars and not in naira.

“I also immediately gave the feedback to the head office, and from what I heard, the money has been returned to the sender.”

IMPLICATION OF GTBANK’S OFFER TO PAY IN NAIRA

Adeyera told FIJ that a dollar exchanged for N550 when the money was paid on May 23. “What this means is that if the bank had been sincere enough to allow me have my $10,000 payment when the money came in, I could have converted it on my own to an amount in the range of N5.5 million,” he said.

“However, the bank’s insistence on crediting me in naira meant that they were forcing me to accept the prize money at the rate of N400 to a dollar.

“This means that whoever is behind GTBank’s refusal to pay me in dollars stood a chance of pocketing N1.5 million.

Adeyera also insisted that based on his last correspondence with The Great Foundation, the money is still with GTBank