November 22,2022

Ola Anuoluwapo, a Ibadan-based perfume entrepreneur, has told FIJ how she simultaneously lost the funds in two bank accounts belonging to her around midnight of Sunday.

Anuoluwapo has visited branches of both the United Bank for Africa and Guaranty Trust Bank in Bodija to report the theft. GT Bank gave her a tracking identification number and told her to wait for three weeks while they investigate.

According to Anuoluwapo, she did not sanction the transactions and she had not shared her bank details with anyone else

“I woke up to the debit alerts yesterday. All the money in both my UBA and GT Bank accounts were wiped. I didn’t authorise any transaction on my phone,” Anuoluwapo told FIJ on Monday.

“From my UBA bank account, I lost about N14,000, and I lost about N19,000 from my GT Bank. I saw that others have experienced the same challenge from my bank too. There are complaints of the same nature on Twitter too.

“When I went to a GT Bank branch, The customer service personnel gave me a tracking number and told me to come back after three weeks. They told me that they would investigate how the money went missing but I have to wait for three weeks.”

FIJ obtained screenshots of the debit alerts from both bank accounts. The description of both debits showed that the receiver of the funds was an OPay account holder

Anuoluwapo told FIJ that she recently opened the UBA bank account. She also said that the only fund in the UBA account was money she sent to the account from her GT Bank account.

“I don’t have an OPay account and my customers pay only into my GT Bank account. Until I sent some money from my GT Bank account to it, I didn’t use the UBA bank account at all,” she said.

Anuoluwapo also told FIJ that the UBA branch along Awolowo Way, Bodija, told her to wait for two weeks. The bank claimed it would investigate the debit in those two weeks.