Nigeria’s banking sector is locked in an escalating war against cybercriminals, with the latest casualty being Access Bank Plc, which has approached the Federal High Court in Lagos seeking to recover N1.34 billion allegedly stolen from four corporate customers in a suspected cyber fraud incident.
The tier-1 lender told the court that it uncovered the breach upon resuming operations on August 12, 2026, after detecting unusual transactions traced to its Access SME internet banking platform. An internal investigation reportedly showed that a combined N1,340,425,393 had been moved from the accounts of four corporate clients, MIB TXN Bullion, Aba Branch; AIICO General Insurance Company Limited; Apogee Engineering Limited; and Sims Nigeria Limited, without authorisation, and dispersed across accounts domiciled with Access Bank and 71 other financial institutions and payment service providers.
The breakdown showed that N590,975,889 was allegedly taken from MIB TXN Bullion, N420,449,504 from AIICO General Insurance, N136 million from Apogee Engineering, and N193 million from Sims Nigeria.
In its ex-parte application, marked FHC/LAG/MISC/1168/2026, Access Bank told Justice Akintayo Aluko that it had already alerted the 71 respondent institutions and requested that the funds be preserved pending recovery.
In its affidavit, the bank stated: “The Applicant, immediately, contacted the 1st – 71st Respondents to notify the Respondents of the fraud and request that the funds be salvaged.”
Justice Aluko granted three of Access Bank’s four reliefs, ordering the affected institutions to place post-no-debit restrictions on the beneficiary accounts, disclose recovered sums, and watchlist the relevant Bank Verification Numbers.
The judge, however, declined to order an immediate reversal of the funds, ruling that doing so would amount to a final determination at an interlocutory stage.
He adjourned the matter to August 31, 2026, and directed Access Bank’s counsel to file an undertaking as to damages should the interim orders later prove to have been wrongly granted.
The incident places Access Bank alongside a growing list of Nigerian banks confronting sophisticated and costly cyber intrusions in 2026, a year in which digital fraud has moved from the fringes of banking risk to the centre of boardroom concern.
Access Bank’s own fraud history
The latest allegations add to a difficult run for Access Bank on the fraud front. The lender’s 2024 annual report showed it had cut actual fraud and forgery losses to N1.69 billion, down sharply from N6.15 billion in 2023, even as the number of attempted incidents rose to 11,410 involving N3.5 billion, compared with 6,634 cases worth N8.61 billion the previous year.
Fraudulent transfers, unauthorised withdrawals and the reactivation of dormant accounts accounted for the bulk of the 2024 loss, at roughly N1.24 billion.
The bank was also separately fined about N1.2 billion in 2024 by regulators including the CBN and the Securities and Exchange Commission over infractions spanning anti-money laundering compliance and delayed cyber-incident reporting.
The current N1.34 billion case, should it be confirmed as a successful breach rather than an attempted or partially recoverable one, would represent one of the more significant single incidents to hit the bank in recent years.
