Anthony Olasele, a Nigerian in the diaspora, is not dead. In fact, he has never been dead. But somehow, a court document declared that he died in 2022.

Olasele would later realise that a post-no-debit (PND) order had been placed on his Polaris Bank account due to his alleged death. This means he was blocked from transacting on the account.

He learned about the startling court document last month, after he observed that his Polaris account seemed to have been frozen on February 3, 2023.

As seen in his Twitter post on May 16, he contacted the bank immediately after he noticed this, but the bank told him he was legally dead.

I discovered my account is inactive when I made this tweet. I last transacted on the account on 27th December 2021 and 13 months later it was deemed inactive. 4 months of communication and many paperworks later @PolarisBankLtd say I’m a dead person but won’t show the court order https://t.co/njD6zcB0Ko

— Groovy (@avogroovy) May 16, 2023

“I discovered my account [was] inactive when I made this tweet. I last transacted on the account on December 27, 2021, and 13 months later, it was deemed inactive. Within four months of communication and much paperwork, [Polaris Bank] later said I was a dead person but wouldn’t show the court order,” Olasele wrote.

In the post, Olasele asked the bank to send him a copy of the court order, as this would aid him in knowing where to show proof of life so that the bank would lift the restriction on his account.

FIJ learned that the bank had refused to send him the court order at the time he made the post.

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DECLARED DEAD AND MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

Olasele learned that one Tina Olasele had claimed to be his wife and filed for probate documents at the High Court in Abuja.

Probate is required for the administration of the estate assets of a deceased person, and it is granted after an interested person makes an application to the probate registrar of a high court.

“After submission of the application, a bank certificate shall be issued. This bank certificate will be taken to all banks and companies where the deceased owned accounts and shares, where information on such accounts will be filled and endorsed,” an article by Resolution Law Firm states.

Olasele found this amusing because he neither knew anyone called Tina nor had he ever been married.

Having realised that the bank was bent on withholding the court order from him, Olasele made a request to the court in Abuja, and he was able to get the documents.

He told FIJ that the court documents comprised a death certificate, a probate letter and a marriage certificate, among others, and revealed the identity of the people who got the probate under false pretences.

FIJ obtained some of the documents, which claimed Olasele got married in July 2017 and had two children with the strange Tina before his death.

According to the court documents, he died at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) on September 4, 2022.

“I have been out of the country for years, and I don’t even have relatives or an address in Abuja,” he told FIJ.

READ ALSO: EFCC Freezes Lagos Businessman’s 3 Bank Accounts for ‘a Crime He Knows Nothing About’

POLARIS BANK’S NEGLIGENCE

FIJ understands that Polaris Bank failed to verify the court documents that made the bank restrict Olasele’s account. Thus, the bank stopped him from accessing his money without confirming whether he was dead or not.

At the time of this publication, the bank had not lifted the restriction on his account, even though he had told them he was alive since February.

FIJ reached out to the bank on June 12 for comments on the issue.

In response, Adeola Omorebokhae, the head of Polaris Bank’s contact centre, said, “We only disclose information of a customer to the customer or the lawyers.”