Stakeholders at the Customers’ Forum organized by the Bulkpost venture, an outfit of the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) have frowned at unethical practices in the industry, especially the emergence of conversion of dividend warrants.

Mallam Ibrahim Mori Baba, post-master general of the Federation (NIPOST) said that theme of the Forum: “Nipping in the Bud the Re-Emergence of Conversion of Dividend Warrants: The Role of the Bank,” demonstrated the aspiration of the Service to eliminate most of the hideous activities which make effective delivery of capital market mail very difficult, if not impossible.

“Our concern stems from the realization of that gone are the days when some government agencies rely upon monopoly to hide their inefficiency and poor performances,” he said.

He added the imperative is also culled from believe that competition has become a key characteristic in the global economy and that postal services operate within the global communication marketplace that is growing more competitive and diverse.

Bayo Olugbemi, managing director and chief executive officer, First Registrars and chairman of the occasion, identified that fraudulent practices in the financial industry has permeated other sectors like the postal and courier because they are important stakeholders, hence the need to nip in the bud the trajectory of the incidences.

He also called on the courier operators and the banks to embrace integrity and curb all miscellaneous fraud practices like manipulation of customers’ salary scheme, fraudulent liquidation o f customer’s investment, dry posting into staff account, and conversion of dividend warrants as well as the late delivery of services.

He added that NIPOST and the courier firms should hurriedly carry out “Know Your Customer” (KYC) report to update their delivery addressing systems.     

Speaking on the theme, Mr. Paul Eluhaiwe, director, Development Finance Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), defined dividend as, “A payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits”. Therefore, it remains one of the key factors that drive market activities and aid investment decisions.

He said that despite the significance of dividends to investors, the stock of unclaimed dividends from the nation’s bourse reached N60bn in 2012 from N42bn in 2011; hence the knowledge of the magnitude of unclaimed dividends is one of the factors that caused the re-emergence of illegal conversion of dividend warrants.

Meanwhile, according to the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) released report on frauds and forgeries in the Nigerian banking industry between July and September 2012, it received 59 returns from 22 deposit money banks in the 3rd Quarter of 2012. Of these, 20 were received for the month of July, 18 for August, and 21 for September.

“Analysis of these returns indicates that the banking industry reported a total of 1,501 cases of frauds and forgeries in the period under review from 1,103 cases reported in the preceding period,” he added.

Also speaking, Adeola Odetunde, presenting a paper on behalf of Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) reminded the attendees that a fair suit towards the fight of fraudulent conversion of dividend warrants, calls for strong institutional framework and integrity of staff.

According to him, the registrars have enormous responsibility to ensure that information relating to various stakeholders in their database are not leaked to fraudsters.

“Investigation into some reported cases of fraudulent conversion of dividend warrants has shown that, sometimes, the fraud was made possible because of compromise of stakeholder information in the database of the Registrar,” the EFCC chieftain said.

He added that market operators, banks, post offices and other critical stakeholders should be weary of the trends of the crime, impersonation and forgery and should aid the EFCC in trying culprits.

On his part, Dr. Mike Umo, general manager, Bulkpost Venture, and the Organizers of the Forum said that the Forum was conveyed for stakeholders to share their thoughts and suggestions on how to tackle to issue and other unwanted obstacles that have made business processes unsecured and unhealthy for the practitioners.

“It is a way to show that we care about the happenings in the industry. Nipping in the Bud the Re-Emergence of Fraudulent Convention of Dividend Warrant: the Role of the Bank, is a topic borne out of our desire to address some to the challenges we are having in the field. For instance, the Convention on Dividend Warrant (CDW) has been there; at a time, it was removed, all of a sudden the Convention reemerged. So we have been having challenges with different Registrars writing to us that a lot of customers are complaining they did not see their dividend warrant.

“In BulkPost we do not deliver mails. We only collect, flank and distribute them to Central Mail Processing Centers (CMPC). That is where our duties end. Whatever happens from that point we do not know. So when people started complaining we felt it is important we bring the topical issue to bear,” he explained.