An employee of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH) has accused First City Monument Bank (FCMB) of refusing to waive an erroneous additional N800,000
An employee of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH) has accused First City Monument Bank (FCMB) of refusing to waive an erroneous additional N800,000 on his loan, even after the bank acknowledged the error.
The employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, claims he has written to the bank through his lawyer and visited several branches since 2021 to no avail.
The issue began after the employee, who opened an account with FCMB in 2012, took out a top up loan of N750,000 in 2017 and another N200,000 in 2019.
He had been making consistent monthly payments of between N41,000 and N65,000. In 2021, the employee discovered a sudden and unexplained discrepancy when his loan balance jumped from approximately N750,000 to N1.8 million, despite his continued monthly payments of N52,000.
After becoming suspicious, the YABATECH staff visited an FCMB branch in Mushin to investigate the matter.
A loan officer at the branch acknowledged a problem with his account and directed him to the risk management department at the FCMB Ikeja office for resolution.
He said, “I went to Ikeja, but they referred me back to Mushin, saying someone named Mr Seun (who originally opened my account) was responsible. When I got back to Mushin, I was told that Mr Seun had travelled to America with his family.
“I explained the situation to another lady who cross checked my loan history from 2012 to the present.
Again, she found discrepancies and told me to return to the Ikeja office. At one point, they admitted there was a system error and promised to fix it, but they did nothing.”
He said that at some point, FCMB sent some of its staff to meet him at YABATECH for a resolution. They had meetings and promised to look into the matter, but again, nothing came of it.
“At the risk management department, I met a man who checked my loan history. He discovered that in December 2012, barely four months after I took the initial loan, they allegedly gave me another one. That’s impossible. How could I have been given a second loan in the same year, just months apart? It’s not standard practice anywhere,” he said.
He stated that, “Since then, I’ve been going up and down, trying to find answers. That’s why I asked my son for advice on what to do next.
“Most recently, they claimed that the increase in my loan balance was due to skipped payments and the central bank’s multiple interest rate hikes, all done without prior notice. But this doesn’t explain where all the money I’ve been paying over the years went.”
