By OLUSOJI DAOMI
There is a familiar drama that unfolds daily across Nigeria. You stand before a POS terminal. The agent taps. You insert your card or transfer from your phone. The machine beeps. The agent squints at the screen. “Network issue.” You check your phone. Debit alert. But the agent shakes his head. “No credit.”
At that moment, something inside you drops. Because in that small space between “debit” and “no credit” lies one of the most frustrating experiences of modern Nigerian life. Your money has left you. But it has not arrived anywhere. It is in transit. Or so they say.
The question that follows is always the same. Who is holding my money? The POS agent points to the bank. The bank points to the network. The network is nowhere to be found. And the customer stands alone, holding a receipt that proves nothing and everything at the same time.
To understand this problem, one must first understand how the system works. When you carry out a POS transaction, you are not dealing with just one party. There is the bank that issued your card. There is the receiving bank. There is the payment processor. There is the POS agent who is merely the human face of a complex digital chain. Money, in that moment, is not physically moving. It is data. Signals. Instructions passing through multiple systems. And when something goes wrong, the system does not always fail gracefully. It freezes. But your account does not. Your account is debited.
Now, the law and regulatory framework in Nigeria do not leave this situation unattended. The Central Bank of Nigeria, as the regulator of the financial system, has issued guidelines to ensure accountability within the agent banking structure, a sector that has grown rapidly and now processes millions of transactions daily.
The principle is simple. If money is debited and the transaction fails, the system must reverse it. Not as a favour. But as an obligation. In most cases, such reversals are expected to happen within a short period, often within hours or a few days, depending on the nature of the transaction and the systems involved.
But Nigerian reality, as always, introduces its own complications. Delays happen. Files move slowly. Complaints are logged. Reference numbers are generated. And the customer is told to wait. Behind this waiting lies a deeper legal question. Who is responsible?
The answer is not always as straightforward as Nigerians would like. The POS agent, in most cases, is not the owner of your money. He is an intermediary, operating under the authority of a financial institution. The law recognises him as an agent, not a principal. His responsibility is to facilitate the transaction, not to guarantee its success.
That is why the Central Bank insists that agents must be properly registered, supervised, and tied to specific financial institutions, ensuring accountability within the system. So when a transaction fails, the first line of legal responsibility usually rests with the financial institution and the payment system that processed the transaction.
In simpler terms, your bank cannot simply say, “It is not our fault.” Because it is your bank that debited your account. And under the law, once your account is debited for a failed transaction, the obligation to investigate and, where appropriate, reverse that debit lies within the banking system.
But this does not mean the POS agent is completely irrelevant. There are situations where the agent may be at fault. If the agent uses the wrong transaction channel. If the agent engages in fraudulent conduct. If the agent deliberately manipulates the process. In such cases, liability may shift. And the matter may move beyond civil complaint into the realm of fraud, where agencies like law enforcement may become involved.
So, the next time you hear those familiar words, pause. Do not argue blindly. Do not walk away helplessly. Ask questions. Demand process. Follow through.
Yet, for the average Nigerian, the issue is rarely fraud. It is delay. Delay that stretches from hours to days. From days to weeks. And sometimes, silence. This is where your rights as a customer become important. The law does not expect you to suffer quietly.
Once a failed transaction occurs, the first step is to report it immediately to your bank. Not casually. Not verbally. Formally. Generate a complaint. Obtain a reference. Because in law, documentation is power. Without it, your complaint becomes a story. With it, your complaint becomes a case.
If the bank delays unreasonably or fails to act, the matter can be escalated. Beyond customer care. Beyond branch managers. To regulatory authorities. Because the financial system is not self-governing. It is supervised. It is regulated. And it is expected to respond.
What many Nigerians do not realise is that the system is designed, at least in theory, to protect the customer. But protection requires participation. You must complain. You must follow up. You must insist.
There is also a lesson in caution. In the rush of daily transactions, many Nigerians ignore simple safeguards. They walk away without receipts. They fail to confirm transaction status before leaving. They rely entirely on verbal assurances. But in a system where errors can occur, evidence matters. That small printed slip. That transaction alert. That reference number. They are not mere details. They are your shield.
In the final analysis, the question “Who owes me my money?” does not have a single emotional answer. It has a legal one. If your account is debited for a failed transaction, the banking system owes you a duty to resolve it. The POS agent may be the face you see, but the responsibility runs deeper. Through networks. Through institutions. Through systems designed to ensure that money does not simply disappear.
And yet, in Nigeria, the experience often feels otherwise. Money vanishes. Explanations follow. Resolution takes time. But the law remains steady. Your money cannot be taken without accountability. Your complaint cannot be ignored indefinitely. Your right to your funds does not disappear because of “network issues.”
So, the next time you hear those familiar words, pause. Do not argue blindly. Do not walk away helplessly. Ask questions. Demand process. Follow through. Because in that moment of confusion between debit and credit, what you need most is not anger. It is awareness. And awareness, in a system like ours, is the first step toward getting your money back.
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