Managing Director First Bank Mr Bisi Onasanya
First Bank Plc has been drawn into another crisis again.
Presently, the talk is about how banking activities at the Lagos headquarters of the bank was halted for several hours on Wednesday, August 13, over debt issues.
The bank was held to randsome by the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service, Technical and Recreational Service Employees,
(AUPCTRE), an affiliate of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, which claimed that the financial institution was owing about 1,100 of its members N1.8 billion in outstanding arrears of emoluments.
The union, prevented customers from entering the banking hall for any transaction. Most customers of First Bank’s Lagos headquarters were frustrated at the development, which lasted for over four hours.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, the Lagos State Secretary of AUPCTRE, Biodun Bakare, disclosed that, “They (First Bank) have been owing our members working with Anambra State Government Water Corporation salaries and allowances for eight years.”

Bakare narrated further that, “On this, our union took Anambra State Government and the bank to court and the government said they have paid the said money to First Bank for onward disbursement to the workers.

A court ruled on July 14, 2014, that this money be disbursed to the account of these employees and since that time nothing has been done. First Bank assured us that it was fashioning out strategies for the payment and 22 days later nothing had been done.”
“We gave them seven days ultimatum and after the expiration of the ultimatum the bank is yet to pay.”
Bakare also lamented that its members had suffered for the past eight years due to First Bank’s refusal to pay the workers, vowing that the union will disrupt banking activities in all branches of the bank across the country until the workers were paid.
Reacting on the development, a staff of the Corporate Communications Department of First Bank, Efeturi Doghudje, stated that the institution would issue a statement on the matter later.
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