Nigerians Are Outraged at How First Bank Carried Out Its Latest Mass Layoff

First Bank of Nigeria has sparked widespread outrage online following accounts of how the institution carried out its latest round of staff layoffs, and it is not the decision to let people go that has Nigerians talking, but the method.

According to accounts circulating on social media, the bank began by sending a new set of non-core staff into branches across the country one morning. Depending on the size of the branch, as many as ten new workers arrived at once, and to everyone present, it looked like routine recruitment.

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Management then asked the existing non-core staff to train the new arrivals, walking them through how to check account balances, post transactions, open accounts, and navigate the various menus on the system. The training went ahead without incident, and nobody had reason to question it. What those staff members did not know was that the people they were patiently showing the ropes had come to replace them.

The realisation came when they tried to log into their systems the next time they arrived for work and found their access had been revoked. 

According to claims, some assumed it was a network issue and reached out to IT support, only to discover that some of the IT staff receiving those messages had also been locked out. Shortly after, an SMS arrived informing them that their services were no longer required. There were no prior meetings, no warnings, or explanations except the text message.

The accounts have generated a significant reaction online, with Nigerians expressing outrage at the bank, sympathy for those affected, and a broader unease about what job security looks like in an economy that offers very little room for error when income disappears without warning.

The banking sector in Nigeria has a long history of abrupt exits for non-core and contract staff, but the deliberate use of outgoing employees to train their own replacements without their knowledge has struck many as a particularly cold way to handle it, even by industry standards.

First Bank had not issued a public statement at the time of publication.

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