Popular Nigerian social media influencer Martins Vincent Otse, better known as VeryDarkMan, was arrested in Abuja on Friday by officers of the Nigeria Police Force. His arrest followed a public outcry over unauthorised deductions from his mother’s Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) account.
Confirming the incident to SaharaReporters, the influencer’s lawyer, Barrister Deji Adeyanju, said the arrest was orchestrated by GTBank. According to him, Otse’s only “offence” was speaking out about multiple unexplained debits made in the name of loan repayments—loans allegedly never taken by his mother.
“My client, VeryDarkMan, was arrested today in Abuja by the Nigerian police. His only offence was speaking out about suspicious and repeated debits from his mother’s GTBank account for loans she never took,” Adeyanju stated.
Prior to the arrest, Otse had posted a video on social media where he and his mother visited a GTBank branch in Abuja to demand clarity and request her bank statement. In the video, he highlighted at least seven separate deductions made in 2025 alone, all under the pretext of loan repayments.
“Myself and my mom just arrived at GTBank to get an explanation for the constant debit from her account… So far, in this year alone, there have been more than seven debits on loan repayments,” he said. “GTBank staff are cooperating—hopefully, we’ll know why they keep doing this.”
Otse’s arrest has stirred fresh concerns over the growing trend of alleged financial misconduct and intimidation involving GTBank.
In a separate incident reported by SaharaReporters on April 14, Ariyo Ahmed Adewale accused GTBank of engineering his arrest after he staged a peaceful protest at one of the bank’s branches in Lagos. Ariyo claimed that more than ₦2 million vanished from his account through unauthorised transactions linked to online retail platform, Jumia—a service he said he has never used.
“I discovered that ₦2,000,000 had been debited from my GTBank account without my authorisation,” Ariyo said. “I immediately contacted customer care and asked them to block the account, but more transactions had already gone through.”
GTBank reportedly maintained that the transactions were made with Ariyo’s debit card. However, he insists neither his card nor his phone left his possession at any point.
When he visited GTBank’s Kosofe branch in Lagos for clarification and a printed statement, he alleged he was met with hostility and later told by police officers from Alapere Division to submit a formal complaint and petition through his lawyer.
The back-to-back incidents have sparked public discourse on customer protection, accountability in the banking sector, and the growing concerns over banks allegedly using law enforcement to silence customer complaints.
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