In the days of the analogue system, it used to take usually long agonizing hours for a bank customer in Nigeria to get one simple transaction made in a bank. Our banking halls used to be packed full with bank customers ironically wearing sad, frustrated and worried countenances as if they were in a house of mourning and not in a house of money. In the eighties and nineties when matters got worse, a well known comic once took a mart to his bank as a message that if matters there took a further turn for the worse, he could sleep there in order for him to be able to withdraw money from his account!
This is why during the Obasanjo days when electronic banking was introduced in our shores, many hailed the revolution. This introduction has greatly eased a lot of things for bank customers and their banks. But there are still some very disturbing features that are never resolved for the benefit of suffering customers. One of them is the issue of the use of a debit card.
If a customer uses the debit card of his bank to withdraw from another bank other than his own and the transaction fails or is declared declined but his account is nevertheless debited, he is left stranded as he cannot get the money he wanted even if he has an emergency case on his hand. He may be there and then instantly turned into a beggar if he left for the transaction without any money on him. It becomes worse for him if it is his card that has been ‘swallowed’ by that ‘foreign’ bank and it cannot be retrieved for him by that bank for him to go elsewhere and try his luck.
Rather, he is required to go to another branch of his bank in that community, if there is any there, or far away from where he is even in another town or location in order to get his trapped card. Why is this the rule that greatly inconveniences the poor customer?
The main and perhaps only cause of these failures is what is known nationwide as ‘’network’’ problem. What, exactly, is the cause of this network problem that after more than 20 years since the coming of the Global Mobile System that this problem cannot be solved? Is it sheer lack of will on the part of our political and economic leaders or lack of expertise on the part of the whole humanity of Nigerians and Africans to fix this problem?
I sincerely do not know the answers to this query of mine but can someone who is very knowledgeable about these things explain to me and many other Nigerians what is the problem. Opay has come into our banking system with a storm and if it is able to keep at the pace it has set, it shall take over our banking from the traditional banks some of which have been in existence in this country for nearly two centuries now. Is the challenge we have with our network problem systemic or scientific? Whatever it is, can no solution be found for these weaknesses?
You need to be a victim of this network problem to appreciate the concerns I am raising here. Four days ago I went to Ogoja LGA of northern CRS to withdraw some money from my UBA account. The UBA does not have a branch of its bank in a town as big as Ogoja so I went to do the transaction in another bank branch and my card was swallowed. The bank told me to go to a UBA bank branch either in Abakaliki in Ebonyi State which is about 120 kilometres away or to Ikom which is about a 100 km or to Gboko in Benue which is about 150 km as there is no branch of the UBA in the whole of northern CRS.
About three years ago when I had the same experience, I took the option of visiting the Ikom branch which is the closest of the three alternatives available to me. There in Ikom, I discovered that many from Bekwarra, Yala, Obudu, Boki, Etung, Ogoja and others from the northern and Central Senatorial Districts of the state who opened their UBA accounts in various parts of Nigeria had the same issue with their cards. We congregated there and were sharing our unpleasant experiences. While at Ikom, we found out that we were confronted by the same network problem that drove us from Ogoja and our various LGAs to Ikom. Because of the same network problem that day, nothing could be done to enable us to have our cards with which we could make transaction of any kind. For how long shall we continue to endure this problem?
How can a nation with so great a potential as Nigeria be so doomed by a phenomenon called network problem? What, again, is in this problem that over these years no leadership has seen it fit as a challenge it is poised to address? I have talked here about a Chinese bank called Opay that seems set to send out other banks from the business if care is not taken. Are we bound to suffer over matters that other nations address without much stress in their drive towards development?
