Banking Sector Fraud Fueled By Casualisation-ASSBIFI

By Tosin Olatokunbo

The high rate of fraud in the banking sector may have been caused by casualisation of workers in the sector, according to the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions, ASSBIFI in a report.

Many employees of commercial banks in the country have been convicted of fraud, lately by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC while others are still facing trial for stealing funds belonging to the banks.

Just last month, the Lagos Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, arrested three bankers for an alleged case of conspiracy, stealing, forgery and obtaining money by false pretense.

A statement  by EFCC said the suspects, Kagha Emmanuel Uchenna, Okoro Chinasom Davidson and Egbogu Emmanuel Obiora, who are employees of one of the new generation banks, allegedly conspired and defrauded the customer. They will soon be charged to court, the anti-garft agency said.

Investigations revealed that the trio forged the signature and National Identification Management, NIM number slip of the customer, activated his mobile banking application and fraudulently withdrew over N51 million.

Over 80 per cent employees in the banking and other financial institutions are casual workers and not being well paid nor treated with dignity of labour, the umbrella body of workers in the sector said. The situation must not be allowed to continue and immediate solution must be found to the problem of casualisation in the sector, ASSBIFI said

Casualisation is a working arrangement that was not permanent in nature and does not fall within the traditional standard employers employee relationships.

In February this year, the Nigerien Senate said it was working on a bill to stop the casualisation of graduates in the country. Not much has been heard about the bill since then, even though it has already scaled Second Reading in the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly as at the time.

ASSIBIFE now says the only way to salvage the problem is to work out a special arrangement for this category of workers. According of the association’s president, Oyinkansola Olasanoye, the casual workers must not be allowed to be poorly remunerated perpetually.

According to her “Presently, the Labour Law Act made provisions that there will be contract staff, but our battle is that those contract staff should be allowed to have the dignity of labour and be adequately compensated,” adding that the reason why fraud is now prevalent in the sector is because employees are poorly paid.

“We respect the casual workers, but we realised that due to inadequate compensation, it is easy for them to be used as frauds,” she stated noting that the association is planning to create a career path for such workers through regulations in the Federal Ministry of Labour.

She explained that “The casual workers are not employees of the institution. There is a third party that provides them, and these providers are also registered by the Ministry of Labour. These providers give the casual workers two-year employment.

“At the end of the two years, the contract is renewed with a new term. The union is trying to create a career path that at the end of the second year, there should be some negotiations. If the institution needs employment, the worker moves and becomes an employee.”

“This is so that when the worker wants to move to another institution, he should move with three years of experience and not just the two years contract. This is what we are putting into the regulation.”