Ola Alayande (not real name), a businessman in Lagos State, had an eight-month pregnant wife to support when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) froze his three bank accounts and detained him for a crime he knew nothing about.

Alayande told FIJ his predicament started when his smartphone was stolen in the first quarter of 2022.

He said before his phone was stolen, he had opened a Kuda Bank account which he never really used. Then after he lost the phone, someone registered another Kuda account with his name and Bank Verification Number (BVN).

The businessman said when his phone got stolen, he simply bought a new phone and SIM card, adding that he never thought he needed to report the robbery at a police station.

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According to Alayande, a sum of N140,000 was fraudulently transferred to the compromised Kuda account, and when the owner of the money, who happened to be in Benin, Edo State, involved the EFCC, he was considered a suspect because the account bore his name.

He noted that although his name and BVN were linked to the compromised Kuda account, the picture and phone number were not his.

“The police first arrested me on September 21, 2022, in Lagos at the banking hall of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) and took me to Area ‘F’ Ikeja. Then the EFCC came for me,” he said.

While explaining how he was arrested, he said he needed to withdraw some money from his Zenith Bank account that day but could not do so because his account had been frozen without his awareness.

“I did not even know that my bank accounts had been frozen. I just saw that I could not do any transaction on that particular Wednesday. Zenith Bank said they needed to contact my account officer. The account officer said my account had been flagged, and I wondered why.

“Then I went to GTBank to see if I could withdraw some money. Meanwhile, I had deposited some money into that account that same day. When I got there, they did not even tell me anything. They just asked me to wait. While I waited, the police came to arrest me.”

Alayande told FIJ that he slept at the police station that night and the EFCC picked him on September 22 from the station to their office, where he spent the night as well.

“My wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, was seriously crying when the EFCC picked me from the police custody,” he said.

“The EFCC assumed I was responsible for the fraudulent transaction. Whereas, my phone had been stolen months earlier. They said someone transferred N140,000 through a fraudulent means and it was my BVN that traced it to me.

“They said a pending order was placed on my three accounts with GTBank, Zenith and Access Bank. On September 23, they granted me bail and asked me to report at their Benin office in Edo State for interrogation because the complaint that led to my arrest came from there.”

He could not travel to Edo State until September 28 because he had to source for the money for his trip through other means as he could not access the money in his accounts.

“At the Benin office, they showed me the picture of the guy on the Kuda account and asked if I knew anything about the N140,000. They said the movement of the guy was from Benin to Kaduna. I told them I did not know the guy and I had never been to Benin or Kaduna.

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“I told them about the stolen phone and added that I never reported it. I wrote a statement.

“The following day, they said since I was still on bail, I should go back to Lagos and I should be reporting at their office in Lagos once every month. And I have been doing that since then,” said Alayande.

On January 30, Alayande wrote a letter to the EFCC, requesting them to remove the restrictions on his bank accounts.

He told FIJ that apart from an acknowledgement he got from the commission, he still could not access his accounts.

When contacted on Friday, Wilson Uwujaren, the commission’s national spokesperson, said he was not aware of the incident.

Although he later asked FIJ to send him the detail of the incident via WhatsApp, he had not responded to the message at press time.