VICTOR AYENI examines how accidental bank transfers are becoming a troubling feature of Nigeria’s cashless economy, where some recipients quickly spend, hide, and a worrying few brazenly refuse to refund money sent in error to their accounts
When Richard Okoye received a credit alert of about N300,000 on his phone one morning, he stared at the screen in disbelief.
As it turned out, the money had been mistakenly transferred into his account by the old-generation bank he used.
For a schoolteacher surviving on modest wages, the sudden windfall felt like a rare stroke of fortune. His wife, however, was less persuaded. With a mix of suspicion and curiosity, she asked where the money had come from. Okoye had no clear answer.
All he knew was that the alert carried the name of his bank and that no explanation accompanied it.
At first, doubt lingered. He suspected it might be an error. But caution soon gave way to excitement.
Within hours, the then 39-year-old made his way to the nearest ATM and withdrew a large portion of the money.
What followed was a spending spree driven by relief and delight: a hurried trip to the market to purchase items he had long postponed, followed by a stop at a nearby pub, where drinks flowed freely.
To Okoye, the money felt almost divine, reminiscent of the biblical account of the prophet Elijah, sustained in famine by bread and meat delivered by ravens.
But this providence, it turned out, came with consequences.
After about three months, the bank called Richard and asked him to return the money, explaining that it had been transferred to his account in error.
“That was when he called me and asked for N300,000, but I couldn’t raise the money. All I had was for my building project at the time.
“The bank was threatening to arrest him. In fact, they had already reported him to the police, and the police had started calling him on the phone, too.
“After much stress, he refunded the money to the bank; otherwise, he would have been arrested, charged in court, and jailed. His experience was eye-opening,” one of his relatives, Benjamin, recounted to Saturday PUNCH.
‘I sent N500,500 instead of N50,500’
On November 21 last year, a legal practitioner, Ibrahim Lawal, was in Benin City, Edo State, where he attended the Nigerian Bar Association National Executive Council meeting.
While in the city, the chairman of the NBA Ibadan branch stopped at a market, where he patronised a palm oil seller and paid via bank transfer to a Point of Sale terminal.
Driven by Central Bank of Nigeria initiatives, POS agents have become ubiquitous in Nigerian markets, offering digital services such as cash withdrawals, transfers and bill payments, far beyond simple cash access.
“The transfer was done to a POS account number,” Lawal told Saturday PUNCH. “But instead of sending N50,500, I unknowingly transferred N500,500 to the POS account.
“I did not receive any alert, and the POS operator also did not disclose that I had sent more than the required amount. When I later realised that I had paid N450,000 more than I was supposed to, I became distressed.”
Fortunately for Lawal, both a friend and his wife were present at the Bar Centre when he discovered the error.
“Folajuwon Banjo volunteered to represent me by helping to obtain an order for reversal. My account officer, Opeyemi Amole, also escalated the matter to the digital bank I paid into.
“Truthfully, I had lost hope of recovery after being informed that there was no money in the recipient’s account. But at about 11.am on Tuesday, January 6, 2026, I received an alert of N450,000, being a reversal of the money. It truly felt like a New Year’s gift,” he added.
Erroneous bank transfers
Mistaken bank transfers, often referred to as “wrong transfers” or “fat-finger errors”, are becoming an increasingly troubling feature of Nigeria’s rapidly digitising banking sector.
In many cases, recipients refuse to return funds, creating distress for senders and, in some instances, forcing legal intervention.
A report published by EdPlugNG in November 2025 revealed that nearly half of Nigerian banking users suffered financial loss due to interface-related errors within the previous 12 months.
This challenges the popular narrative that network failure is the sole culprit in Nigeria’s digital banking woes.
With the acceleration of the CBN’s cashless policy, transaction volumes through mobile apps and USSD platforms have surged.
However, while banks invest heavily in server capacity, far less attention appears to have been paid to human–computer interaction design.
The report, which analysed 12,000 social media support tickets, found that 42 per cent of respondents admitted to making at least one irreversible mistake, such as a wrong transfer or excessive airtime purchase, within the past year.
One in five users, representing 19 per cent, reported making minor errors, including clicking the wrong button or restarting failed transactions, on a weekly basis.
The study identified the “zero glitch” as the leading cause of financial loss, accounting for 34 per cent of reported cases. This typically involved users adding an extra zero, sending N100,000 instead of N10,000, often due to apps failing to auto-format figures with commas in real time.
Another 15 per cent of cases were classified as classic “fat-finger errors,” involving the selection of the wrong beneficiary from saved contact lists.
The report also identified a specific “fatigue window,” noting that such errors were three times more likely to occur between 9pm and 11pm.
in bank account numbers, missing digits, or confusion over names.
He said the first step for anyone who makes such an error is to immediately contact their bank’s customer care service and report the transaction as a mistake.
“For someone who receives money like this and does not voluntarily reach out to the sender to return it, I don’t think that alone constitutes a crime,” Ohaeri said.
“However, once a proper request is made and the recipient refuses to refund the money, a case can be opened, and it may be treated as fraud.”
He added that mistaken transfers are more common with mobile and digital banking apps, which often require only a phone number, unlike traditional banking systems.
“The sender should report the issue through the app, but there is no absolute guarantee of a refund. These platforms have built-in security prompts that ask users to confirm the recipient’s details. That is why people are advised to stay calm and double-check details before completing transfers,” he explained.
Directives and regulations from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission make it clear that money that unexpectedly appears in a bank account is not “free money” and may be linked to fraud or an erroneous transfer.
Yet, for some recipients, these rules appear to fall on deaf ears.
One such case is that of Kingsley Ojo, who unlawfully took possession of more than N1.3bn belonging to a bank.
According to the EFCC, the funds were mistakenly credited to Ojo’s account due to system glitches.
Investigations revealed that upon receiving the money, Ojo “transferred a good measure of it to the bank accounts of his mother, Itohan Ojo, and his sister, Edith Okoro Osaretin, and committed part of the money to the completion of his building project and the funding of a new flamboyant lifestyle.”
However, the EFCC’s Benin Zonal Directorate recovered and returned N802.42m to the bank, while over N300m was reversed directly from Ojo’s account.
On Tuesday, Justice W. I. Aziegbemhin of the Edo State High Court, Benin City, convicted and sentenced Ojo to one year’s imprisonment or a fine of N5m. The court also ordered him to restitute First Bank Plc with N272,252,193.59 within a stipulated period.
EFCC arrests
Similarly, in October 2023, operatives of the Gombe Zonal Command of the EFCC arrested the managing director of an agricultural firm in Jos, Plateau State, Ibrahim Abubakar, over the alleged theft of more than N57m.
The sum was reportedly paid into Abubakar’s company account in error by a firm that intended to pay another organisation within the same bank.
According to a statement signed by the EFCC’s Head of Media and Publicity, Dele Oyewale, after the bank alerted Abubakar to the mistaken credit, he allegedly transferred N5m each into his personal accounts in two different banks.
Attempts to withdraw the remaining funds led to his arrest and subsequent prosecution.
A year earlier, the EFCC arraigned a Nigerian Air Force officer, Haruna Samuel, for allegedly spending N20m inadvertently credited to his account.
The serving lance corporal at the Nigerian Air Force Base, Kaduna, was charged before the Kaduna State High Court on counts bordering on theft and criminal misappropriation.
The defendant, who denied the charge, allegedly committed the offence on December 3, 2020, after receiving the N20m said to have been erroneously transferred by his employer into his bank account.
Without expecting any payment of such magnitude from his employer, the EFCC alleged that Samuel failed to report the issue to his bank or employer and went ahead to withdraw part of the fund for personal use, including settling debts.
‘She spent our N800,000 on fabrics’
On May 2, 2025, an X user, Edith Okoli (@ii_kach), raised an alarm online after mistakenly transferring N800,000 to a wrong bank account through her banking app.
The registered nurse said she immediately reported the error at her bank, only to be told that it could take weeks before any recovery was possible.
Hoping for faster intervention, she proceeded to the new-generation bank used by the recipient, but was allegedly informed that “nothing could be done without a court order”.
“The receiver of the money has already started spending it, and the bank refused to release the receiver’s phone number so I could contact them. The money was contribution (ajo) funds,” Okoli said.
She recalled how her distraught mother went to the bank in tears, pleading with officials to place a lien on the recipient’s account pending a court order.
“The bank staff said nothing could be done. Customer care referred her back to my bank to send an email before the account could be placed on lien. She went back to the bank, met with the manager, and they promised to send an email to the receiver’s bank, but we couldn’t get a court order that Friday,” Okoli added.
Sharing a screenshot of the transaction, she identified the recipient as Nwakego (surname withheld), whom she said she was reliably informed had already moved the entire N800,000 into another account.
About two weeks later, Okoli shared an update, announcing that Nwakego had been arrested by the police.
According to her, she had been expecting N1m from someone on the same day the erroneous transfer occurred.
“Her brother deposited N300,000. Before her arrest, I had called her repeatedly to return my money. I pleaded with her and even sent text messages requesting the same. During one of our phone conversations, she threatened to sue me if I contacted her again,” Okoli said.me back and cover all the expenses I’ve made. Even after the police arrested her, she couldn’t pay anything. She had nothing on her,” Okoli added.
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