Female Customer Detained 3 Days By Bank For Default In Loan Refund

A Micro Finance Bank at Ipaja area of Lagos, allegedly detained a petty trader for failing to pay a weekly N2,000 earlier agreed on towards offsetting the N17,000 loan she borrowed from the bank.

Mrs. Rose Abbey was allegedly abducted and beaten up before she was locked up in a room at the bank located at 170/ 172, Ipaja Road Baruwa on April 25, 2013. She was released three days later.

Sources alleged she was neither allowed to have access to members of her family nor given food while in the 3-day detention.

Mrs Abbey was said to be freed only after her friend paid the N2,000 to the bank.

Narrating her ordeal, the victim told newsmen that she borrowed N17,000 from the bank to run her small scale business at Gowon Estate and the condition was that she will be refunding N2,000 every week. She said she had been paying as at when due until the 25th of April, when poor sales denied her the opportunity to pay.

the victim, Mrs Abbey
the victim, Mrs Abbey

“When the manager of the bank confronted me about the payment, I told her that I could not meet up with the payment for the week because of poor sales. She insisted that I must pay the money and dragged me to their office and locked me up along with another defaulter till the third day.

“They prevented me from contacting my husband and they attempted to seize my phone and only allowed me to contact a friend who brought the money before I was released. After my release, my husband could not believe my story when I got home. It was only after he confirmed it that he believed me.”

The manager of the Microfinance bank and two others were arrested and taken to the Gowon Estate Police station after the matter was reported to the police, according to a police source, for detaining the woman illegally.

The source revealed that the bank officials admitted to holding the mother of four in their office because she was not able to pay their money, stating that she signed an agreement with the bank before they borrowed her money. The source said the bank Manager however, denied assaulting her adding that she was only trying to recover the bank’s money.

The victim’s husband, Mr Emmanuel Adeyemo Abbey confirmed the incident to Crime Alert on phone. He stated that the first thing that came to his mind when his wife came back was that she had gone after another man, adding that later, he had to listen to her because she has never done that before. “Initially, I did not believe my wife until later when she showed me the injury she sustained and her friend who gave the bank the money also confirmed it, before I believed her.”

He said he was not aware that his wife owed such money adding that it was not an excuse to illegally detain her without informing the police. Lamenting his wife’s fate, the husband further stated that her children were left alone in the house and throughout her stay in the bank they did not eat anything and were not taken proper care of because they could not tell about their mother’s whereabouts.

He alleged that after the issue was reported to the police, they are yet to do anything about the case adding that he doesn’t like the way they are treating that case and threatened to go to court to seek for redress if the police fail to take appropriate action against the bank officials.