Insider Deal: Two Years After Termination of Employment Ex Union Bank Staff Receives Surprise 13th Month Salary, Decries Irregularities in Statement of Account

Secret Reporters

A former staff of Union Bank of Nigeria, in Warri Delta State, have decried the irregularities in her account and the unscrupulous attitude meted on her by her former employee in her attempt to reactivate the current account she maintained with the bank.

According to Mrs. Joyce Omizu, despite meeting the requirement and providing the necessary documents to reactivate and change her details on the said account, the Main Market branch of Union bank in Warri Delta state refused to do the needful. Rather the white stallion bank riding against their slogan, in an unsmart and dubious move to sway her from visiting them regularly, allegedly resorted to sending fake activation alerts to her each time she goes to the bank. The ex-staff of the bank disclosed to SecretReporters how she served the bank for eight years, first at the Warri main market branch and subsequently at the Enerhen road branch as Officer 1 grade with a six-figure annual remuneration but surprisingly received a letter of termination on April 19, 2013.

Describing the abrupt termination as an insider deal, Mrs. Joyce alleged, that not only was the termination letter riddled with irregularities ranging from the letterhead to the signature, she did not also receive an email or correspondence from the head office as was the custom of the bank. The letter, however, was delivered to her by her manager Mr. Nwachukwu Charles who expressed shock while disclosing to her that he had earlier rejected the letter from the zonal manager Asaba since she was one of the hardworking staff he had in his branch.

Mrs. Joyce further revealed that her suspicion was aroused after two years, precisely on October 30, 2015, when she received an alert from Union Bank crediting her account 00168*** with the 13th-month salary as was the tradition for staff in the bank. “It was then it beckoned on me that there is a foul play somewhere because there is no way the bank will terminate one’s employment and pay such after two (2) years of exit,” she said. Her immediate attempts to get a statement of account from the bank further heightened her suspicions. She alleged that the branches she visited always came up with the excuse that there was no network. However, on December 3, 2021, a successful attempt at the Warri Sapele Road Branch of the Bank unearthed irregularities in the account. Rather than furnish her with the complete statement of account, with a start date of January 1, 2013; three months before she received the termination letter, and end date of December 3, 2021, as requested, the statement of account stamped and presented to her by the bank only showed transactions from April 2nd, 2015.

Her inquiry on why other transactions and dates prior to 2015 were not included in the statement yielded no positive answer. Mrs. Joyce Omizu, determined to get to the root of the matter we learned, during one of her visits to a branch in Warri, was involved in a vital accident that almost claimed her life. This was after she had visited the Union bank head office in Marina Lagos twice to meet either the General Manager of the bank or the Head of Human Resources to confirm the authenticity of the letter of termination and report the suspected irregularities on her account but was unsuccessful.

When SecretRepoters contacted the Head of Customer Service at the Warri main market branch of the bank, Mr. Mayaki, he first denied knowledge of such an incident involving an ex-staff of the bank. However, he later said that maybe the issue might be that the person in question sent a proxy, stating that he recalled an incident in which they couldn’t honor the customer’s request in line with the bank’s guideline of checkmating fraudulent activities on accounts. He further requested that our reporter contact the ex-staff and confirm if she ever visited the bank in person to rectify the issue.