When Amos Aveh, a senior executive officer at the National Theatre, Iganmu, got his October salary payslip, he was surprised to see a N12,000 deduction. He was more surprised when he saw that the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) paid the money to Crevance Credit Limited, a microfinance bank he had no business with.
All his efforts to trace the bank and get answers have been futile.
Aveh told FIJ on Tuesday that he had no previous dealings with the bank.
“I wonder how they got my details. I don’t even know of the company, and I had not heard about them before,” Aveh explained.
Aveh tried to contact IPPIS to ask for an explanation since no deductions could occur from his salary unless they allowed it. He tried some IPPIS phone numbers, but none connected.
He also told FIJ that he could have contacted First Bank, but the bank could not see such deductions.
“Banks can only give what comes in after deductions and the subsequent transactions you personally make,” Aveh explained.
“It is only the net pay that goes to the bank. Deductions made from the source don’t reflect.”
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With that knowledge, Aveh took matters into his own hands and decided to find Crevance himself.
The first step he took was to look up the microfinance bank on Google. There, he found the office’s location and decided to trace the company through Google Maps.
The Crevance Credit Ltd address traced through google maps
The address Aveh found on Google read: 4 Bunmi Joseph Street, Gbagada, Lagos.
“In fact, on Google, they even pasted the picture of the house, which is exactly the one I visited at Bunmi Joseph in Gbagada,” Aveh added.
When he got to the location he traced through Google, Aveh said he found that Crevance was not located at the address posted online.
“I was turned back by the security man. He said there was no such company there,” Aveh told FIJ.
“I went inside and confirmed that it was actually a different company that was there.”
The problem for Aveh was not just the deduction, his bigger concern was that such deductions meant his salary account with the IPPIS may have been compromised. He also fears the deductions could continue.
While Aveh’s complaint was a big deal in itself, FIJ’s independent findings about Crevance Credit Limited raised more questions than answers.
FIJ WENT LOOKING FOR CREVANCE AND FOUND NOTHING
FIJ looked through Crevance’s social media accounts but found that they have mostly been dormant.
For instance, the last and only post on Crevance’s Facebook account was in 2017 at the time of writing this report. On their X account, the most recent post was in 2022.
FIJ found an entirely different address on their Instagram account that carried the address: the Abebi, Tinubu Close, off Coker Road, Ilupeju, Oshodi, Lagos.
FIJ visited Tinubu Close in Ilupeju but Crevance was not located there. A gatekeeper at Tinubu Close and other residents in the area confirmed that they did not know about any microfinance bank named Crevance.
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Four other persons in the area pointed FIJ to another microfinance bank located in the area. They all also said they had never heard of Crevance Credit Limited.
Crevance was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission in 2017.
Source: Corporate Affairs Commission
Crevance was also one of the 173 loan applications approved by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to operate in Nigeria, according to a 2023 report.
FIJ took five different phone numbers from Crevance’s X account. While four numbers did not connect, a female voice answered the fifth.
When FIJ asked to confirm if the recipient worked or had affiliations with Crevance, the female voice repeatedly said “She is not around” and stopped responding before FIJ could ask who the ‘she’ was.
FIJ also contacted IPPIS multiple times on Wednesday, but the line only rang without a response. The IPPIS had not responded to FIJ’s message at press time.
The post IPPIS Lets Unknown Crevance Credit Deduct Non-Existent Loan From Civil Servant’s Salary appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.