Lawal Afeez Arishekola, a Lagos State businessman, has shared how Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) deducted N50,000 from his account last month and all efforts to get a reversal yielded no fruit.

Arishekola said when he checked the bank’s mobile app on October 26, he had N14,434 in his book balance, while his available balance showed was -N35,665.

FIJ gathered that the book balance is the total of all sums in a customer’s account, while the available balance is the portion of the sum that a customer can access.

He told FIJ that since the day he noticed the negative balance in October, GTB had kept deducting his money, as he had kept funding the account.

The Lagos-based business owner said he had never initiated any transaction to warrant such strange deductions.

“I did not receive an SMS or email debit alert from the bank, yet cannot access the money in my book balance. I contacted GT Bank via all channels, but no response from them for more than three weeks. I even raised a Twitter campaign and made my friends retweet and like, yet no response from them on my money,” he told FIJ

“I also contacted a friend who works at the bank, but he told me the bank didn’t provide any feedback on it.

“I complained to the FCCPC, but no positive response from them for up to two weeks now. GTB kept giving me bot responses in their Twitter DM.”

GT Bank could not be reached for comment, as the bank’s customer service professionals were busy. Messages sent via email and SMS had also not been responded to at press time.

In response to FIJ’s inquiry on Twitter, the bank wrote: “Thank you for providing us with this information. Your query will be transferred to the next available agent.”