Everyday we get to hear and see in the news how aggrieved bank customers stormed into the banking hall to cause commotion and disruption of the banking activities until someone in the authority attended to their displeasures for the reason of being cheated by the banks or their monies stolen “by the bank”.
The recent news of these was the man that invaded a bank in Delta state this week and carried the bank’s printer and another computing system for the bank having debited him unnecessarily and said he will take the bank’s computing equipment home to sell to recover his money unless the bank refunds him the money they debited from his bank account.
Customers that have resorted to self-help, invade banks to register their displeasures. These forms of crude behavior should never be encouraged and allowed to thrive in a sane and civilized society like Nigeria. Many bank customers have been seen numerous times causing commotions inside the bank hall, cursing and cursing the staff and management of the bank, and disrupting bank activities to the displeasure of both the bank staff and the bank customers present at the bank at the time to carry out their transactions.
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This method of bank customers resorting to self-help should never be allowed to be the order of the day but when citizens feel they have been taken for a ride in so many ways and the court system is slow in dispensing justice then you will see reasons with the narcissistic behaviors displayed by some customers.
Self-help is frowned at in every legal system, it is a jungle justice and when every aggrieved citizen engages in self-help then the judiciary will be of no use and the society will collapse into a jungle back to its raw state of nature which according to Thomas Hobbes, the society will become nasty, brutish and short and this should never be the end-result of a man in a developed society like Nigeria.
Banks should take a thorough auditorial review into the incessant charges and debits that their customers face and get from the bank. Some of the charges are uncalled for and it can only be said to be stealing; it’s either the bank is stealing from their customers or the bank is experiencing system glitches, whichever it is, it should be fixed as soon as possible and this should never grant angry customers who cannot endure the charges and debits the push to resort to self-help in disrupting banking hall activities and leading to the break down of law and order.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has on many occasions made regulatory policies and rules to curtail and put in check the incessant bank charges and debits that bank customers get from commercial banks and it can only appear that some commercial banks in Nigeria don’t want to play by the good books of upholding the right banking ethics and obeying the CBN’s financial regulations.
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (Fccpc) which is the governmental body established to look into issues of this nature are not doing enough in looking after bank customers and putting a check on the internal affairs of commercial banks in Nigeria.
Commercial banks in Nigeria should endeavor to fix their system glitches and fish out the staff and if need be fire those staff that have displayed some level of kleptomania so as not to push their customers to start taking laws into their hands.
