Dapo Adediji, a farmer based in Ibadan, Oyo State, received a N3.5 million loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) after a six-week training period in 2018, but Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) is yet to release the money.

Adediji told FIJ that after the CBN disbursed the loan of N3.5 million to his GT Bank account, they told him he could access it as it was all his. But for some unknown reasons, GT Bank withheld the money.

The agriculturalist said that when he first went to the GT Bank headquarters in Bodija, Ibadan, a staffer made him sign some papers and told him to check back later to receive the loan.

He said he went to the bank after some days in October 2018, but the workers kept telling him to check back because the loan was not exactly ready.

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“And that was how it started. Since October 2018, I’ve been going to the bank. All they say is that I come back the following day, up till now,” Adediji told FIJ.

Adediji said that whenever he asked the bank staffers what the problem was, they would not answer directly but tell him they would send an email to nip the situation in the bud.

“At some point, GT Bank said they placed my account on lien. Lien for what? I had to ask the CBN if they put some conditions before the bank could disburse the money, but they said nothing of the sort existed,” he said.

“The CBN staffer I met got angry when he learnt of what I was going through. He said the issue was with the bank because after they disbursed the money, the beneficiaries should have had unrestrained access to the money.”

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Adediji said he travelled out of the country and returned sometime in 2019, hoping GT Bank would have resolved whatever issue they had but this was not the case.

“It was still the same story of come back today and come back tomorrow. I asked them what was happening, but they said the money was somehow restricted. I told them the N3.5 million reflected on my bank app, but GTB still did not release the money for my business,” Adediji said.

He said that his account officer told him to go to the headquarters of GT Bank in 2020, which he did but yet made no headway.

The agriculturalist said he had asked many of his acquaintances working with GT Bank to help him find out what was wrong, but they told him nothing was wrong with his account.

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He said that a GT Bank staffer recently told him to take the issue to Twitter to call the bank’s attention.

“She said that I should sue them just for them to refund me. She even felt bad for me. The purchasing power of N3.5 million four years ago differs from now. They killed the business for me because there was no funding,” Adediji said.

FIJ emailed GT Bank, but they had not responded at press time. FIJ also contacted Cornelius Onuoha, one of the bank’s consultants, but he neither answered nor returned our calls. At press time, he had not responded to the message sent to his email.