#LendingUpdates: Middle-aged man hangs self over online loan app's untold harassment, calls for Federal Government 's clampdown on online loan apps thicken

A report reaching the news desk of #LoanXperience has it that a middle-aged man from Delta State, South-South Nigeria, last week, committed suicide by means of hanging following untold harassment and embarrassment from MintLoan, an online loan app

From information reliably gathered by #LoanXperience, the deceased who was simply identified as Matthew, following an emergency need, secured a loan to the tune of fifty thousand naira (N50,000.00) at forty per cent (40%) interest rate for a seven-day tenor, but which he was unable to repay following a delay in the payment of his salary.

According to the report, a son of the deceased explained that his father was a committed customer of the online loan app having always patronized it from time to time. "My father had always patronized MintLoan and repaid promptly, but unfortunately, he could not meet up with the timely repayment of the last loan due to a disappointment in the payment of his salary", he said.

"Without allowing him any breathing space to look elsewhere for the repayment", he further said, "MintLoan and its recovery agents, less than three hours after the expiration of the repayment deadline, began to unleash all manners of threats, including incessant phone calls to his contacts, sending defamatory messages to them; and threatening to publish his photograph as a fraudster on the social media."

According to him, his father, following frustrations which were borne out of the incessant harassment and embarrassment from MintLoan and its recovery agents, resolved to commit suicide by means of hanging. "The harassment and embarrassment which MintLoan and its recovery agents subjected my father were too much for him to withstand and, therefore, decided to take his life by hanging", the son of the deceased explained.

Frowning at this ugly development, Nigerians have called on the National Assembly, Central Bank of Nigeria and other regulatory agencies to prohibit MintLoan and other online loan apps whose repayment period is less than a month.

The online loan apps whose repayment period is less than a month, according to few Nigerians who spoke to #LoanXperience, are sniffing lives out of their helpless customers and, therefore, call for checkmating and prohibition.

They particularly called on the National Assembly to act swiftly to sanitize Nigeria's lending industry.