QUERIES TO RASHEED OLAOLUWA OVER FLAGRANT ABUSE OF ABUSE.,
BANK OF INDUSTRY’S EXISTENCE THREATENED BY STINKS OF CORRUPTION..,
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BANK OF INDUSTRY EXECUTIVE EMBROILLED IN RUNNING BATTLES OVER INDEFENSIBLE CASES OF MASSIVE FRAUD ALLEGATIONS..,
Over the last three months, staff and stakeholders of the bank and some of the foremost anti-graft whistle blower groups in the country, have been clamouring for the suspension of Rasheed Olaoluwa the MD/CEO of the Bank of Industry Limited, who has been embroiled in running battles over cases of massive fraud allegations and unethical corporate practices, which have consequently reduced the development finance institution into an ugly spectacle of some sort in the minds of curious Nigerians, especially the entrepreneurial class, who felt that the bank has not been delivering of its mandate under the watch of the embattled Executive.
We are however compelled by numerous calls and agitations from concerned Nigerians, who are increasingly becoming weary in the long silence maintained by the anti-graft authorities over several allegations levied against Rasheed, to demand forthwith ANSWERS OR EXPLANATIONS from the Chief Executive who is capitalizing on the purported silence to call the bluff of Nigerians who are not only inquisitive to see a rejoinder from him, but also curious to know why the institution is being stripped naked in the face dwindling impact.
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To Rasheed:
As a credible group that would not only rely on one side of a story to make conclusions or accept hook, line and sinker the wildly speculated notion that the MD/CEO of the development finance institution, had suddenly become haughtier, and now sees himself as a sacred cow too special to be touched, on account of his apparent closeness to some big wigs around the corridors of power, we will respect your personality and humbly request you to respond to the issues bordering on flagrant abuse of office within the next 14 days upon receipt of this directive, as Nigerians are earnestly waiting for your response.
For ease of reference, please find below the inexhaustible list of queries:
1) Please disclose the illegal sales of about 127million units of Federal Government Shares in WAMCO, valued at N40. 15billion, which were being held in trust by Bank of Industry (BOI) on behalf of the Federal Government.
What informed the choice of BGL Securities Limited as the Transaction advisor? As you are aware, this so-called investment security firm was recently suspended from the country's Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) following accusations of several financial scams levied against the chief proprietor and his company which is currently in court with the EFCC.
2) It is alleged that outside the N400 Million Commission earned by BGL Security in the sales of WAMCO Shares (makers of Peak Milk), please disprove the fact that you Rasheed Olaoluwa also obtained for yourself illegal financial advantage amounting to about N1.0 billion in the WAMCO transaction?
3) Why the panic sales of the bank’s choice properties to cronies in the twilight of the Jonathan’s Administration and just few weeks after Buhari was sworn in.
4) Please mention the name of the corporate organization, individual or group that bought over the bank’s equity in WAMCO! It may interest you to know that some big names including the owner of an acclaimed leading bank in Nigeria has been forwarded to us by impeccable sources, but we have decided to treat such as speculation until you avail us with your submission.
Your response should also include those who are buying up the bank’s choice properties.
5) Please explain your intentions behind the redeployment of the bank's substantive Head of Internal Control & Audit Department to Ibadan, and subsequent futile attempt to terminate his appointment.
However, we are aware that there is a court order from the National Industrial Court (NIC), a court of competent jurisdiction, restraining you from going ahead with your decision to terminate his appointment, but unfortunately that order was not respected by your person. Also tell us why a CEO of a public sector owned institution should not be punished by the law and government for blatantly disobeying court orders? It is not only contemptuous, but also an exercise in arbitrariness and impunity, and smacks disrespect for the office of the CEO of a legacy development finance institution and the office of the judge as well.
In the same vein, we would also want to know the reason for your attempted termination of Rakiya Zubairu’s appointment who heads the Gender Desk, especially at this time when there is a global appeal to Heads of Government all over the world to take the issue of gender inequality as a matter of serious concern.
However, the information at our disposal shows that your decision to terminate her appointment was more of vindictive than factual.
6) As the MD, it is right to exercise your prerogative as to who should be part of your team, and those to promote or demote, but do you think it is ethical or morally right to demote the two former Assistant General Managers (AGMs), Akinsola Adetokumbo and Balarabe Hassan to Principal Managers, just to pave way for the recruitment of two of your cronies, Taiwo Kolawole and Mike Esoto as AGMs in replacement? We were reliably informed that the demoted AGMs who are in their mid-50s, have meritoriously served the bank for more than 20 years on individual capacity.
From the same source, we gathered that Taiwo Kolawole and Mike Esoto have long replaced the former Chief Finance Officer and the Divisional head (Management Services) who are both substantive General Managers with proficient management experience and qualifications, in contrast with Taiwo, who is a 2001 accounting graduate and an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAN), while Esoto by qualification and experience appears to be a complete misfit in issues of human resource and assets management.
By way of highlight, the office of the Chief Finance Officer and the Divisional Head, Management Services are strategic portfolios that control and manage all the finances and the assets of the institution, and are usually held by substantive General Managers (GMs). If the current practice in Bank of Industry is as so stated, then such an aberration must be corrected.
Many have considered these moves, including the redeployment of the former head of IC & A, as sinister stratagem designed to make it easier for you to prosecute the desperate agenda earlier mapped for the bank, under the Jonathan’s Administration.
On appointment still, we gathered that Mike Esoto was employed and affirmed by the then Board as Technical Assistant to the MD, but few weeks after the dissolution of the Board, he was redeployed from TA to his present position. In the same vein, you appointed one of your relations by name Gbolohan, as Head, Treasury Operations, the department consigned with the responsibility of fund transfers and disbursements.
7) What was the rational that informed your decision of forcing five staff of Igbo extraction, including a lady who was on maternity leave, to resign their appointment with immediate effect? The most painful side of the story is that the lady on maternity was not given any severance package or any form of incentive to cushion the effect; and few weeks after, some staff were recruited from UBA Plc., in replacement.
8) Please explain what informed one of your earliest decision upon assumption of office, to initiate the cancellation and retrieval of loans valued at more than N50 billion, which were approved by your predecessor and guaranteed by credible financial institutions including UBA Plc.? A singular action considered by industry stakeholders as ‘’anti-enterprise by action and in thought’’
We learnt that substantial portion of the retrieved fund was switched to UBA Bank Plc., (your previous employer). Without prejudice to the foregoing, this act subtly upsets the core mandate of the development bank which prioritizes real sector financing over money market investment. If the likes of Simo Systems Construction Ltd, Unilever Plc., Midland Galvanizing Limited, Radar National Plastics Limited amongst several others which were denied this opportunity were funded, the multiplier developmental effects on the economy would have been enormous in terms of job creation and increase in national productivity.
9) It is interesting to note that one of the Executive Directors, Mr. Mohammed G. Alkali, had resigned his appointment on grounds of principle, but prior to his resignation, the bank has been running without an adequately staffed executive management team, given the fact that the CBN (one of the major shareholders of the bank) has been so reluctant to nominate an Executive Director to the bank's management team (see further disclosure below)
10) Please explain the reason for terminating the appointment of one Yusuf Baba, who was purportedly accused to have leaked out information on the MD’s alleged atrocities to the press, and to unsuspecting staff of the public institution?
We are adequately informed that last year, the Bank signed up to the CBN’s Policy on Whistle blowing, and it is expected that banks are to provide the Apex Institution with update on whistle blowing activities on quarterly basis. If this is the case, would you accept that the termination of this young man’s appointment, barring unforeseen circumstances is a blatant violation of the CBN’s Whistle Blowing Policy? As you may rightly know, ‘’those who go to equity, must go with clean hands’’
11) We are aware that the conversion of the N50.0 billion Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) fund from bond to equity realigned BOI’s shareholdings structure in favour of the Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated, which now placed the ministry above CBN in terms of equity participation.
However, all efforts to persuade the Apex financial institution to rev up its equity participation in the bank has met brick wall. Subsequently, it was gathered from a reliable source within the CBN that the apex institution is reluctant to either upgrade its equity in Bank of industry or nominate an Executive Director to the bank’s Management, due to lack of confidence in the present Executive Management Team (Lack of Executive Credibility).
As credible as the assertion might seem from the CBN’s perspective, it might have been remotely responsible for the fraudulent activities and corporate governance issues alleged by staff and stakeholders of the institution. It is extremely important that the CBN takes this point of view very seriously, not only as a shareholder, but also for the sake of protecting the soul of the institution considered to be the foremost real sector interventionist in today’s Nigeria’s economy.
12) It is on record that you were appointed to office on May, 2014, but to our greatest chagrin, we were reliably informed that you and those you brought along with you, unjustly benefitted from the 2013 productivity allowance, otherwise known as staff profit sharing for whatever reasons.
(Productivity Allowance is a portion of the audited annual profit usually set aside to compensate staff for the previous year’s performance).
If this is certainly true, however, it then means that you lack the executive morale to continue in office as the MD/CEO of Bank of Industry, otherwise, your continual occupation of that office constitutes a mammoth risk to the life of that institution.
13) In a country where 70 percent of Nigerians are living below poverty line, and struggling entrepreneurs are in need of financial support, how would you explain the procurement of SUVs valued at an estimated combined cost of more than N0.08 billion (G-Wagon, Land Cruiser and the latest highlander). If it was your private firm, would you endorse this bogus acquisition as part of the perks of office for your appointed MD?
Why are we bothered as a group?
Following development in the bank and intelligent reports reaching us, we are constrained to align with the members of the public who are calling for urgent Presidential enquiries into alleged corporate malfeasance of the current MD of the bank, suggesting that the embattled executive be suspended pending the conclusion of all investigations.
These calls have become inevitably imperative given current realities as outlined below:
§ The Executive Management Team is not adequately staffed in line with best practice; nevertheless, the 2-man team (the MD and one Executive Director) who are currently running the institution is heavily distracted with barrage of petitions, contempt of court, disunited workforce, and deep distrust across the various categories of staff levels to mention but a few of these abnormally.
§ As a matter of fact, stakeholders and industry observers are under intense curiosity over the collateral damage the Bank of Industry is likely to cause the national economy, if it went under. Entrepreneurs' and industrialists' who rely on the bank's concessionary funding to establish large, medium, small and micro projects, as well as expand, diversify, rehabilitate and modernize their existing enterprises would be the most hit.
It is for this reason, that they are clamouring for the dissolution of the Executive Management Team by the President to pave way for the appointment of a more practically and professionally oriented Executive Management Team and Board Committee, like the one experienced by the nation under Ms. Evelyn N. Oputu (former Executive Director of First Bank of Nigeria Plc., and an industrialist par excellence) who held sway in the bank from December 2005 to December, 2013.
§ Nigerians, especially the entrepreneurial class at the low-end of the pyramid, who are haplessly drifting into the informal sector in droves, due to lack of support from the government-owned development finance institution, established to play an interventionist role in enterprise financing, are keenly watching out for the miracle that would happen under a man who could not save Universal Trust Bank (UTB) from extinction, and has no clue about Economics and Industry before luck smiled at him by mere recommendation of his godfather who was an ally of the ex-President, Goodluck Jonathan!
§ Unresponsive actions on the part of the anti-corruption agencies who are fully aware of these allegations by writing and through the voice of credible social media and have decided to maintain a long silence for undisclosed reasons.
§ Enlisted below are some of the credible links for additional information that may be helpful in the course of further investigation:
www.orijoreporter.com; www.thediplomatonline.com; www.exclusivenigeria.com; www.nigeriastandardnewspaper.com; www. nigerianpilot.com/boi-disposes-of- wamco-dangote-properties-shares-without-due-process
Advocacy for Radical Change (AFRC) is an anti-graft whistle blower group with a strong will to support the Presidential mission of nailing corruption to the coffin before it kills us as a Nation.
Olusola Oladele
President
Advocacy For Radical Change (AFRC)
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