Nigeria’s financial system is sitting on a silent anomaly that deserves far more scrutiny than it currently receives. Across banks and financial institutions lies a growing population of what the industry politely calls “gone-away customers.” These are individuals whom institutions claim they can no longer contact. Letters return. Emails bounce. Phone numbers fail. Accounts remain.
Behind this administrative label sits a vast financial and data governance issue.
Current industry data shows that Nigeria has approximately 19.7 million dormant bank accounts within the banking system, according to figures compiled through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System and reviewed by regulators.
The financial value behind these dormant accounts is staggering. Estimates linked to regulatory reviews suggest more than ₦20 trillion in dormant accounts and unclaimed balances across Nigerian financial institutions.
To put that number in perspective, ₦20 trillion exceeds the annual budgets of several Nigerian states combined. It is also equivalent to a meaningful share of the country’s banking sector liquidity.
The issue is not merely financial. It is fundamentally a data governance problem.
A “gone-away customer” is, in simple terms, a failure of data accuracy. Personal data collected by financial institutions no longer reflects reality. Addresses change. Phone numbers become obsolete. Customers migrate, die, relocate, or simply disengage. Yet the data remains static inside institutional systems.
Modern data protection frameworks treat this as a governance obligation. Personal data must be accurate and kept up to date where necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. When financial institutions lose the ability to reach their customers, that principle has already been compromised.
What is striking in Nigeria is the sheer scale at which this failure has accumulated.
Out of roughly 311 million active bank accounts recorded in 2024, nearly 20 million accounts remain dormant, representing around 6–7 percent of the banking system.
That is not a marginal operational issue. It is systemic. Several factors explain how these numbers grow.
Nigeria’s highly mobile population contributes significantly. Internal migration, international relocation, and informal employment patterns mean customers often change phone numbers or residential addresses frequently. Death records and estate administration processes also remain fragmented, leaving banks with accounts belonging to deceased individuals whose beneficiaries never complete claim processes.
Yet the institutional incentives around dormant funds deserve closer examination.
Academic research examining Nigerian deposit money banks has already observed that unclaimed financial instruments can contribute positively to bank earnings, raising uncomfortable questions about the economic incentives associated with dormant assets.
This does not automatically imply misconduct. However, the presence of billions or trillions of naira sitting in dormant ledgers inevitably creates governance tension.
- Who is responsible for aggressively reconnecting these funds to their rightful owners?
- How transparent are institutions about the value of dormant assets they hold?
- How frequently is customer data verified against national identity infrastructure?
These questions become particularly relevant as regulators attempt to address the issue.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has responded by introducing guidelines requiring banks to identify dormant accounts and transfer balances that remain inactive for ten years into an Unclaimed Balances Trust Fund managed by the regulator.
The intent is clear. Dormant funds should not quietly accumulate inside institutional balance sheets. They should be warehoused transparently until the rightful owners reclaim them.
Even this solution introduces complexity.
The trust fund mechanism allows the funds to be invested in government securities while awaiting claimants, effectively transforming dormant deposits into a form of state-managed financial asset pool. While legally structured as a trust, this arrangement raises legitimate questions about transparency, oversight, and reporting.
The central governance challenge remains unchanged. The most efficient outcome is not warehousing dormant funds but preventing customers from becoming unreachable in the first place. That requires a far more serious commitment to data accuracy.
Financial institutions should be routinely verifying customer records against Nigeria’s national identity infrastructure. Periodic customer data refresh exercises should become mandatory rather than episodic. Dormant-account statistics should be publicly disclosed at an industry level so that regulators, investors, and citizens understand the scale of the issue.
When nearly 20 million customers effectively disappear from institutional contact, the conversation should extend beyond compliance checklists. It becomes a question of trust in the financial system itself.
Nigeria’s banking sector has made enormous progress in digital payments, financial inclusion, and regulatory reform. Yet the phenomenon of “gone-away customers” exposes a quieter vulnerability within the system.
Money remains in the accounts. The customers, however, have vanished from the data.
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Michael Irene, CIPM, CIPP(E) certification, is a data and information governance practitioner based in London, United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK, and can be reached via moshoke@yahoo.com; twitter: @moshoke
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