It almost turned to crisis on Monday morning as customers of Zenith Bank besieged the bank’s branch at Ijaiye Ojokoro, Lagos, demanding their money following operations shutdown which started over two days ago.
Our corespondent who visited the bank following his own inability to use any of the bank’s online and digital platforms was confronted with mammoth crowd which came for the same purpose, with some of them revealing that they were there to transfer their funds to other banks.
A middle-aged man who gave his name as Segun, wearing a very forlorn look, said his main mission was to transfer his money to another bank after two days of unsuccessful withdrawal or transfer with his Zenith Bank mobile app.
“My family nearly went hungry yesterday because of this issue,” he lamented.
“We looked everywhere to use my ATM card but to no avail and this has been the case for the past two days.
“Every POS we went to turned us back; then I tried everything possible to transfer to other banks but the app and and the USSD was not working.
“It was very frustrating yesterday and I am here to go straight into the bank to transfer my money to other banks,” he said.
A lady with a baby clad to her back said her husband transferred money to her since Tuesday morning and till then, she was yet to receive the money.
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“My husband transferred money to my Zenith Bank account since yesterday money and that was for our feeding but as I am talking now, I have t seen the money,” she lamented.
Meanwhile, our corespondent gathered that the problem was not restricted to Zenith Bank alone as some customers, who now were lamenting in groups, revealed the same frustration in using mobile apps of a couple of other banks.
However, addressing the obviously aggrieved customers, an officer of the bank whom a colleague identified as the Head of Operations of the bank said the issue is the same in their branches nationwide as they are upgrading to serve their customers better, revealing that it is a challenge that arose in the bank’s bid to upgrade their services in order to make transactions seamless and to avoid consistent shut downs.
The officer who did not mention his name begged the customers for understanding, saying the issue would be resolved as quickly as possible.
“The plan is not to suffer any customer because we value our customers above any other thing,” he said.
“You are experiencing this because we want to ensure that there won’t be any consistent operational shutdown anymore.
“We are consolidating our operations in order to serve you better and we ask for your patience please,” he said.
No sooner did he finish than an elderly man challenged him, asking that he made his money available to him.
The man who spoke both in Yoruba and broken English said he was hungry because of the operational shutdown of the banks, thus he needed to eat.
