Ondo election: ATMs run out of cash as Akure residents make panic withdrawals

Source: www.today.ng

Femi Makinde, Akure

Scores of residents of Akure were frustrated on Friday following the inability of many automated teller machines to dispense cash as early as 10am.The public holiday declared by the state government worsened the situation because bank customers could only rely on the ATMs for cash withdrawals.

Our correspondent observed that some of the ATMs at Alagbaka area where almost all the banks have their branches were not dispensing cash at around 10:30am.

Some of the frustrated customers loitered around the machines, while some sat close to the device in anticipation that bank officials would come and load cash or rectify the errors that prevented the machines from dispensing cash.

The situation is not different at Oyemekun Road, as the ATMs located there were either not functioning or had run out of cash as at 11:30am.

One of the customers who expressed frustration at the malfunctioning ATMs, Blessing Hassan, said she had spent more than an hour waiting for the two machines at Adegbola Junction to dispense without success.

Hassan said she needed the money to buy things in preparation for the election holding on Saturday.

She said, “The machines around the place are not working. And I can’t go to Alagbaka because some people came from there and told me that the machines over there also did not dispense cash.

“This is unfair; since the bank officials knew ahead that today (Friday) is a public holiday, they ought to have assigned some of their workers to keep loading the machines with money and to promptly rectify any error, to make for hitch-free operations.”

However, some of the machines resumed cash dispensing some hours after.