I hate banks, I absolutely positively hate banks, if not for money transfer, I wouldn't even have an account, I'd just save my money in sprite bottle......... Maybe I should apologise in advance for all the expletives I may or may not spew but I was left incredibly miffed at what I have had to undergo with FBN for about a 2 months now.

I recently left the university and was a bit jobless for a month or two or four, so I had no reason to go to my account and make any deposit or withdrawal as I was a tad skint. So I left the account fallow til early this year when my sister had problems with her atm and decided to transfer the money to me to help her withdraw from my own account. That's where the problem started. I got to the atm machine, tried to withdraw and it showed "invalid transaction, contact you bank" and as a good brother, I played calm just so I don't fray any nerves and told my sister that it was the atm machine in my area that had the problem and that I'll check it the next day since it was already late. Lowkey, I suspected that since my account had been a bit dormant, I would just walk straight to the bank and sort it out then get big sis' money.
When I got to the bank, I explained my situation and it turned out that my account wasn't just dormant, it had also elapsed the time limit for the student account validity and the account was frozen. All these when considered eventually made me ask the obvious question "WHY THE BLOODY FWCK DID THEY LET SOMEONE PAY IN IF THE ACCT WAS FROZEN?" the reply was that "we encourage our customers to keep using the account"...... if I say I was annoyed, I'd be putting it mildly. Then I asked what could be done to remedy the situation immediately as my sister was in dire need of the money. They said I had to upgrade to a regular savings account and that I needed a regulatory ID card (driver's license, national ID, voters card or passport) all of which I had none, nada, zilch, ZERO. I left there dejected. Thankfully, it was close to the end of the month and I now had a job, I gave my sis her money from my miserable salary. But the fight still continued. I'm a really busy person and free time is at a premium for me but somehow I found time to go thru the harrowing stress of national id registration et al and I got the temporary one (since nobody ever gets the plastic one nowadays).
I went back to first bank thinking it couldn't get any harder only for them to reject the temporary national ID..... If you ask me why? I sincerely don't know...... The said they only accepted plastic. I argued that the temporary paper one gave me every right and means of identification that plastic did, but they said it was bank policy. Bank policy on top my money, imagine the load of bollocks......... I just dey look the woman like fool......

Now my question is this..... We all went thru the stress of doing bvn and every detail needed to confirm our identity, down to fingerprint, was taken..... Why don't they just use a finger print scanner to confirm my identity.... I mean, if we are still dragging id cards at this point in our lives, it completely defeats the entire purpose of bvn registration.

My next question is this..... seeing the uniqueness of the kind of 'mumuism' we face in this circus called Nigeria and how incredibly hard it is to get national id card in one's lifetime, how expensive it is for broke boys like me to get passports or driver's license, and how voter's card are only available every 4 years ( correct me if I'm wrong ) ........ Is it that first bank is Not seeing this problem, or are they just making their conditions deliberately, unnecessarily stringent just to chop our money for as long as they can??

The whole issue weak me, even now. They now said they'll only accept my paper national id if I can get someone that has an active account with fbn and has any of their needed ids to come with me to the bank and do referee (other banks would have just given you the form to give the person to fill).... My problem now is time and finding someone with time too to follow me...... With all the hustle in Lagos, people have more money than time...... I have weak....to even close the account, they say I cannot...... All this stress for my own money again.

First bank ehn, awon oloriburuku jati jati

On a side note, if you have an active first bank account with valid id and you stay around idimu or abule odu, abeg contact me, I want to buy one hour and 30 mins of your time for 500 naira

lalasticlala mynd44 abeg help a brother