CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
The level of fraud in the present day Nigeria has assumed an epidemic dimension. It has eaten deep into every aspect of our life even to the extent that a three years old child talks about Yahoo mail or 419, newly discovered sobriquet for advanced free fraud that is hunting our banking industry. Nigeria with al its natural and human resources talkers on the brick of destruction because of fraud. Much of what we do is cutting leaves instead of dealing with the root problem.
Generally, fraud takes its root from the human heart. It is an axion that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and is desperately wicked. The only remedy to the situation will be God’s intervention. Notwithstanding the varied meanings attached to the concept of financial fraud, so many authors addressed the subject with varying definitions.
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The study entails on the rapid increase of the cases of fraud in the Nigerian financial institutions. Various procedure for preventions of ugly act exist but it seems like the most powerful remedy is the intervention of God. Different authors and researchers emerge with their definition on the concept of financial fraud. The following are most of the definitions.
What is fraud? According to Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary, fraud is defined as the crime of cheating in order to get money or good illegally.
According to the chartered institute of public finance and accounting, United State, fraud is defined as those intentional distortions of financial statements or other records which are carried out to conceal the misappropriation of assets or other wise for gain (Ando, 1997:50).
According to Adeniyi (2001), fraud refers to intentional act by one or more individuals among management employees, or third parties which resulted in a mis-representation of financial statement.
According to Okorie, fraud is a type of irregularity. The word fraud is used to refer to irregularities involving the use of criminal deception to obtain unjust or illegal advantage, however, having closely studied these approaches from definition of fraud especially from the banking perspective one may correctly see banking fraud as a deliberate act by an individual or group inside or outside the Nigerian banking dispose the bank depositors or share holders of their funds. Despite several definitions of frauds, the authors believe that the ones so far given are nearly appropriate inspiring and of advantages for the purpose in which the researcher intends to achieve.
The position of banking system in our economy cannot be over emphasized. They act as the “Conduct pipe” through which all the financial transaction passes. However, frau has brought a b sensor bottleneck to the lope functioning of the roles of the banking system to the Nigerian economy people are beginning to get worried and sooner than later may loose confidence in our banking sector due to the mainly increasing incidence of fraud in our today’s bank properties should be on trust not fraud.
- STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The frequent causes of financial fraud in many financial
Institutions in our country are now taken as the utter most concern to financial experts and macro economist. To some banking experts the issue of fraud is an internal vice on the Nigerian banking system. They argue on this because a good number of fraud occur among our banks without the knowledge of outside even where the public is aware, it does not affect the rate at which customers withdraw or deposite money.
These experts are inclined to believe this because the nation is under banked the populace are at no option but to sue the available banks especially the foremost and well established bank like UBA Plc, even if there are glaring inefficiencies in the operations in competence and laziness among most bank staffs giving birth to fraud.
Fraud has paralyzed the roof, the foundation and crushability of our banking system. Just pick up any national daily newspaper of from the police record and you will be alarmed at the extent and magnitude of bank fraud in Nigerian banking system many banks have gone on distress. Therefore, the researcher is aiming at finding or training fraud in the Nigerian banking system which has to offer to these deficiencies aforementioned with special reference with UBA Okpara Avenue, Enugu.