Khadijah Wuraola, a software engineer, has accused the Union Bank of Nigeria of extorting N380,000 from her.

Wuraola told FIJ that the bank failed to credit her account with the equivalent of the exact amount she received from the University of South Wales, the sender of the money.

Wuraola said that the University of South Wales had refunded a £6,000 tuition fee on June 30 with an additional £27 payment so she would not incur any loss in naira but the bank was insistent on paying her in naira.

Wuraola said that she had paid £6,000 to the university through the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Form A via Union Bank on December 30, 2021. She said Union Bank deducted N3,346,069.86 as the equivalent of the money but the university did not receive the fee until she lost her admission.

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“I visited all the Union Bank branches I knew so that they could process the money for me, but they all said there was no FX,” she said.

“By the time the payment would become successful, the deadline for paying my tuition had elapsed. The school asked me to either defer the admission or request a refund. I went for the latter.”

Wuraola said the university notified her that they had refunded the £6,000 with an additional £27 on June 30 so she would receive the exact value of the money deducted from her account in December.

“They told me to wait for 10 working days before it reflected, which I did. After the money reflected, I visited the bank every day for Union Bank to process it, but they kept saying they had no FX,” she said.

Wuraola stated that when she received the money in her account, she figured out that the bank paid her far less than what they should have paid.

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“To my biggest surprise, Union Bank refunded N2,962,511.58 into my account, taking away a whole N383,558.28,” she said.

“This is after the school had added an extra £27 to compensate for the exchange rate fluctuation.”

Wuraola said that the bank had earlier told her to open a pound domiciliary account to enable her to receive the £6,027 in pounds, which she did without hesitation.

“I bought a black market rate of £100 for N77,000 to open the account, but they said they could not refund me in pounds because they deducted naira from my account, not pounds,” she said.

FIJ put several calls across to Union Bank customer care line, but it did not connect. The bank had also not responded to an email sent to them at press time.