•Reveals the industry-wide battle against e-fraud • With N13.37 billion and 4,507 cases, online banking fraud is the most common. About 63% of fraud volumes are in Lagos. • 3,417 people are on the fraud watch list.
Written by Babajide Komolafe
Fraud-related losses in Nigerian financial institutions decreased from N52.26 billion in 2024 to N25.85 billion, a 51% year-over-year decrease.
This coincides with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) announcement of an industry-wide campaign to combat growing digital fraud, with the goal of cutting the time it takes to respond to fraud to under 30 minutes.
In a keynote address at the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum, NeFF, technical kick-off session yesterday in Lagos, Mr. Premier Oiwoh, Managing Director/Chief Executive, Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, revealed that the number of fraud cases decreased by 4%, from 70,111 cases in 2024 to 67,518 cases in 2025.
According to Oiwoh, with 27,460 and 22,470 cases, respectively, throughout the year, the Internet and mobile platforms continued to be the most targeted channels in terms of volume.
With losses of N13.37 billion from just 4,507 cases, he claims that Internet banking was the most financially detrimental channel.
The research also revealed that, with 47% of all fraud volume and N17.84 billion in damages, social engineering continued to be the biggest fraud concern in 2025.
Card theft and robbery accounted for 17% and 11% of other fraud strategies by volume, respectively, demonstrating the ongoing link between physical and digital crime.
Lagos leads the fraud map.
Geographically, Lagos State continued to be the nation’s biggest fraud hotspot, contributing more than 63% of all fraud in 2025. Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, and other significant cities were found to be developing operational hubs for fraud.
Concern is raised by reporting gaps.
The head of NIBSS expressed concerns about the industry’s falling fraud-reporting compliance notwithstanding the drop in losses.
Oiwoh claims that by the fourth quarter of 2025, there were only 34 institutions actively reporting fraud instances, down from a peak of 45 in the second quarter of 2024.
Oiwoh emphasized the importance of reporting and other steps to prevent electronic fraud, saying, “Reporting is critical.” Fraud reporting facilitates tracking and prevention in addition to recovery. Because there was no reporting, we have witnessed instances of fraudsters switching banks. That has to end. Whether the fraud is external or internal, there must be no room for non-reporting.
“NIBSS has developed a Person of Interest Portal in partnership with the Central Bank, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), and security agencies. Approximately 3,417 people who have engaged in fraudulent operations have been identified on the portal since 2019, along with their identities and photos. Security agencies actively use this portal.
“The CBN database, the Person of Interest Portal, and all industry watchlists have been connected. More than 214,000 politically exposed persons (PEPs) are apprehended in accordance with legal standards rather than as criminals. Real-time identity validation and verification is made possible by APIs for banks.
It is imperative that BVN and NIN be properly validated. It is risky to only gather these identifiers without verification. If the tools we have developed are completely implemented, banks can use APIs to verify identities and address up to 95% of KYC issues.
Internal fraud can be avoided through regular worker profiling, job rotation, and required vacation time. It is important to keep an eye on one’s lifestyle. If red signs had been questioned, many fraud instances could have been found early.
“Banks need to trust each other, collaborate, and exchange intelligence. When organizations function in silos, fraudsters thrive. Working together is essential.
CBN launches a new industry-wide campaign against e-fraud
In a similar development, an industry-wide effort against growing digital fraud has been announced, with the goal of cutting the time it takes to respond to fraud to less than 30 minutes.
At the 2026 Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) Technical Kick-Off Session in Lagos, where regulators, banks, fintechs, payment service providers, telecom operators, and law enforcement agencies gathered to map out a new path for fraud mitigation, Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Mr. Philip Ikeazor revealed this.
Ikeazor, represented by Ibrahim Umar Hassan, Director, Development and Finance Institutions Supervision, stated that because electronic fraud losses have increased dramatically in recent years, the CBN, working through NeFF, is pushing for a decisive shift from reactive controls to predictive, real-time, and enterprise-wide fraud management systems across the financial industry.
“Fraud is become a risk for financial stability rather than just an operational problem. Unchecked fraud poses systemic dangers to the economy, erodes confidence in digital banking, and jeopardizes progress in financial inclusion, he said.
He said that the industry has decided to take specific, quantifiable steps, such as cutting fraud response times to less than 30 minutes, which is anticipated to greatly enhance recovery results and reduce systemic exposure.
He cites significant accomplishments like the switch to EMV chip-and-PIN cards, which essentially eliminated ATM card cloning, and the implementation of required two-factor authentication for electronic banking as examples of how NeFF has contributed significantly over the years to bolstering the robustness of Nigeria’s payments system.
“Even as electronic transaction volumes increased quickly between 2014 and 2017, these coordinated interventions helped reverse systemic vulnerabilities and led to significant reductions in e-fraud losses,” Ikeazor stated.
However, he pointed out that new and more complex threats including social engineering, SIM-swap fraud, insider compromise, and authorized push payment (APP) scams had surfaced as historical fraud schemes were curtailed, necessitating stronger, quicker, and more coordinated responses.
Ikeazor stated that the CBN is emphasizing Nigeria’s advancements in identity management, especially the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and its integration with the National Identification Number (NIN), which has greatly reduced impersonation and synthetic identity fraud, as part of the new anti-fraud campaign.
Earlier, Dr. Rakiya O. Yusuf, Chairman of NeFF and Director of the CBN’s Payments System Supervision Department, emphasized in her opening remarks that Nigeria’s progress against electronic fraud is still based on ongoing cooperation between regulators, financial institutions, payment service providers, identity management organizations, and law enforcement.
According to her, the goal of the 2026 NeFF engagement is to protect trust in the payments system while converting enhanced infrastructure, shared analytics, and more robust identity systems into quantifiable decreases in fraud losses.
Ikeazor stated that in the future, the CBN will spearhead the establishment of ambitious goals for reducing fraud, improved accountability, increased interaction with telecom and fintech companies, and open performance evaluation using industry scorecards.
