Bleak Christmas: ATMs run out of cash as glitch hits MMOs

By Omodele Adigun, Isaac Anumihe and Chinwendu Obienyi

Few hours to the Christmas, reports across the country showed that bank customers who wished to withdraw money from the cash machines were having a raw deal as most Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) were not functioning at the weekend,

From Lagos to Abuja, Ibadan to Akure, the story was the same as those who also relied on the mobile money operators(MMOs) to transfer money or obtain virtual top up on their phones could not do so as a result of system failure

In Egbeda, a Lagos suburb, Daily Sun went round some on site ATMs at Ecobank, Wema Bank as well as Guaranty Trust Bank branches, and witnessed a throng, who had banked on the hope that the machine would dispense cash early that morning, around 7.30 am. But they were disappointed when the machines failed to performby 9 am when our correspondents left he scene.

A private guard at one of the banks, however, told Daily Sun that the bank fed the machines with enough cash before it closed the following day, but the number of customers who patronised the ATM was just overwhelming.

At Wema Bank, customers were turned back by the guards on duty who signaled that the cash machines were not working.

However, the offsite ATM of Stanbic IBTC located at a petrol station along Idimu Road was the only one dispensing cash as at the time Daily Sun visited the place around 8 am.

In a related development, airtime recharge via virtual top up was disabled throughout Saturday as those who were used to the system could not load their phones just as those who wished to transfer money to their loved ones through their mobile phones also met a brickwall.

In the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, there was low usage of Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) at various banks visited by Daily Sun at the weekend. This might be due to the fact that over 80 per cent  of the workers in FCT live at  the suburbs.

Also, the acute shortage of fuel in the city limited movements to the metropolis. Except for Zenith Bank along Aminu Kano Crescent  in Wuse 11 that had a mortley crowd of bank customers, others in the zone  recorded one or two customers  as at the time Daily Sun checked there.