The customers of the Heritage Bank Plc, a well-known financial institution in Nigeria have made a call of distress to the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to help them access their monies which has been kept by the bank for more than three weeks.

According to the customers, they cannot make transactions - whether physically or online and that has greatly contributed to the hardship they are facing.

The bank on the other hand, has stated that it has communicated to its customers of “system refresh exercise” on May 13, and that the exercise has finally been completed.

But in spite of the statement from the bank as of Monday, May 20, customers could still not access their funds.

One of the bank's customers at the Zone 5 branch, Hassan Omotayo, stated that he got to the bank around 9:45am “only to be unable to access my money.”

He said: “At one point, they claimed to have distributed N5,000 to customers from the available funds but no one could confirm that.

“As I am speaking to you now, I am about writing a letter of non-indebtedness because this is where my salary account is domiciled. I can change my salary account to where I will be well serviced”.

Another customer, identified as Shola said: “For the past three weeks, I have been able to collect just N10,000. Today again I came all the way from Nyanya to Wuse and they are telling us the same thing."

In its latest mail to customers, Heritage Bank simply wrote: “Successful completion of the scheduled system maintenance on our platforms,” noting that all services are now fully restored.

However, customers have continued to lament their inability to withdraw from their accounts, saying nothing has been resolved by the bank.

The media has reached out to the spokesperson of the CBN, Hakama Ali, but there was no response as of the time of filing this report.

Texts and WhatsApp messages were yet to be replied to.