Nigeria’s banking infrastructure is back in the spotlight after a technical glitch accidentally sent ₦13.66 billion into customer accounts that were never supposed to receive the money, as reported by ITWeb Africa. The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), which powers instant bank transfers across the country, has now gone to the Federal High Court in Lagos to recover the funds nearly two years after the incident happened. According to court documents, the problem started on September 6, 2024, when a fault on the Nigeria Instant Payment (NIP) platform triggered what bankers call “dry posting,” money getting credited to accounts without the actual debit side of the transaction happening. The glitch reportedly affected 176 accounts across 19 banks and microfinance institutions.
What makes the case particularly messy is how long it has dragged on. NIBSS says it immediately alerted the affected banks and asked them to restrict the accounts involved, but the banks reportedly refused without a court order. Legally, the banks had a point. Freezing customer accounts without proper judicial backing can create its own legal problems. But that delay also meant many of the accounts remained active while NIBSS navigated the courts. Now, almost 20 months later, the settlement company is asking for account freezes, Post No Debit restrictions, liens tied to Bank Verification Numbers, and reversals of any traceable funds. The obvious question is how much of the ₦13.66 billion is actually still recoverable after all this time.
The bigger concern is what this says about the reliability of Nigeria’s financial infrastructure at a time when digital payments are exploding. Electronic transactions in Nigeria crossed ₦1.07 quadrillion in 2024, with the NIP platform processing trillions of naira every month. NIBSS sits at the centre of almost every interbank transfer, fintech payout, and PoS transaction in the country. At that scale, even a tiny technical failure can translate into billions of naira moving incorrectly. Some recipients may have spent the money without realising it was an error. Others may have knowingly withdrawn or transferred it before restrictions could happen. The courts will likely have to decide where responsibility begins and ends.
This also isn’t the first time Nigeria’s financial systems have suffered high-profile glitches. In 2023, a NIBSS-related issue reportedly worsened a ₦21 billion Flutterwave incident. In 2025 alone, Wema, Keystone, and Union Bank all experienced system failures tied to unauthorised transfers worth billions of naira. GTBank also mistakenly credited customers with ₦1.9 billion in October 2024 after another technical problem. Even this month, NIBSS itself experienced another outage that disrupted bank transfers nationwide, affecting fintechs like LemFi and Carbon. The pattern has become increasingly difficult to dismiss as isolated accidents.
Behind many of these failures are rushed system upgrades, weak integrations with third-party providers, and infrastructure struggling to keep up with Nigeria’s rapidly growing digital economy. As more transactions move online, the risks tied to technical failures are becoming larger and more expensive. In many cases, ordinary customers are the ones left dealing with failed transfers, frozen funds, or unexplained reversals while institutions sort things out behind the scenes. The NIBSS lawsuit is ultimately about recovering money that left the system by mistake, but it also highlights a deeper problem: Nigeria’s payment infrastructure is scaling faster than its ability to fully control what happens when things go wrong.
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