By BABAJIDE KOMOLAFE

BETWEEN 1994 and 2006, about 48 banks ceased to exist for sundry reasons. Some of the people that had money in these banks, assumed that their money died with the banks. It is not so. Part of their deposits were insured by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC). In the last two editions, we explained how deposit insurance works, the maximum insured deposit, liquidation dividend.

Most importantly, we pointed out that N1.9 billion yet to be collected by depositors of these banks, a lot of efforts had been made to make the owners of this money to come and collect them. The last edition provided information on steps to take to recover your deposits in these banks.The most important requirement is documentation to show that you are the owner of the account. These include unused cheque books, old cheque stubs, passbooks, fixed deposit certificates.

But you have misplaced or lost the documents for the account,  you would be required to present a police report alongside a sworn affidavit duly certified by the court. In addition to this, you would have to identify yourself with a National Identity card, Drivers Licence or International Passport. It is also important to note that, whatever ownership claim is being made would be confirmed through the documents kept by the failed bank. In other words, NDIC relies on documents kept by the failed bank as well as the proof of account ownership presented by the deposit.

The above explanation is occasioned by the enquiries received by Investors Forum in response to the previous editions on this subject. The responses confirmed that lots of people or depositors of failed banks did not know that their money is still alive because they don’t know the deposit was insured. The responses revealed that many of them are desirous of recovering their money no matter how small.

Now, it is also obvious that these depositors need enlightenment and clarification on many issues. It is, however, pertinent to address one of them here. And that is the issue of interest payment. There is no interest payment on the deposit. What the NDIC pays depositors is the money deposited in the bank. Why is it so? Many reasons, but chiefly because once the bank is closed, the deposit is not used to do business. And because it is not used for business, it can’t generate any interest or profit for the depositor.

Finally, for those who seek information on how to reach the NDIC, the next page contains information about the Help Desk of the Corporation and the various means of reaching it.