NIBSS Software Error Creates ₦13.66 Billion in Phantom Funds, 176 Nigerians Sued
Nigeria's NIBSS has been identified as the origin of a ₦13.66 billion erroneous transfer, with the payments infrastructure body now reportedly suing 176 recipients of funds it allegedly created through a software error. The incident is being framed as a potential systemic integrity risk for Nigeria's core payments rails.
NIBSS Lawsuit: the system broke, but ordinary people are being asked to pay for it
When a bug inside Nigeria's Inter-Bank Settlement System conjured ₦13.66 billion from nothing and credited it to 176 people, those recipients didn't steal anything. The system told them money had arrived. They acted on it.
NIBSS is now asking courts to freeze every account each of those 176 people holds anywhere in Nigeria — not just the account the funds landed in, but all of them.
That is a brutal remedy for a failure that was entirely NIBSS's own. And the precedent it sets is arguably more damaging than the ₦13.66 billion itself: if Nigerian courts ratify this, every ordinary person who ever receives a bank credit they didn't expect now carries legal risk for trusting what the payment system tells them.
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- NIBSS created N13B from nowhere and is now suing recipients for it · technext24.com · T2