My Indian friend of 30 years wants to take my companies – Octogenarian

Chief Isaac Oluwole Ogini, a retired federal civil servant, whose companies are on the verge of being taken over by his Indian friend, Mr J. B. Gupta, whom he entrusted them to, shares his tale of woes with SIMON UTEBOR

Q: You’re the Chairman of Bolawole Enterprises Nigeria Limited, but you are involved in a dispute with some Indians over the ownership of your companies, how did this start?

My wife and I floated and promoted BENL and the company was registered in 1980.

I was still in the federal civil service at that time. In 1984, a friend of mine, J. B. Gupta, was sacked where he was working at SD Foods Limited in Isolo, Lagos. The owner of SD Foods, Mr Kagani, an Indian man, happened to be a friend of mine. It was through him I knew Gupta. He used to send Gupta to me at the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs where I was working then. When Gupta was sacked in 1984, he called me and said Kagani had sacked him and asked what I could do to help him. I rushed down to Kagani to know whether he could reconsider his decision about sacking Gupta. He told me no.

Q: So what followed?

Gupta was begging me, asking what I could do for him because he had no place to sleep that day. It was around 8 pm on that day. I pitied him because I could not claim I did not know him. I then took him, his wife and a child (their first child) to a friend’s place at Maryland. I begged my friend, Mr Thomas Furniture, to take Gupta and his family into his house pending when he would get another job or when he would relocate the following day.


Q: Did your friend accept to do that?

Yes, he accepted. Gupta and his family ended up spending three months there. During that time, he was begging me to look for a job for him. I got another job for him at Jafco Group of Companies owned by Mr Emad Jaffar, a Lebanese friend of mine. My friend gave him a house and a car. But Gupta was not fully occupied because they had so many expatriates there as well. So he kept piling pressure on me that he wanted to do business. He asked if I had any registered company and I told him I had a company, BENL.

I gave him the company to trade with. He said he was interested in doing cocoa business. I was about to go the United States in September 1986 for a course, so, I delegated my wife to take him down to our hometown in Ilesha, Osun State, and showed him one of the areas cocoa was being grown – people buy a lot of cocoa there and that has been my father’s business as far back as the 1930s. Though my father is dead, he had a cocoa store there. I told my wife to introduce him to the people so that he could be buying cocoa from Ilesha and bringing them to Lagos. That was how Bolawole Enterprises came into being. I was not working with him because I was still in service.

Q: When did you retire from service and what happened afterwards?

In 1989, I retired from the service and set up another company called Lesag Nigeria Limited, palm kernel oil producing company at Ilesha. I bought the company from Lawrence Omole, one of the richest persons in the Western Region then. I bought the entire company – about 1.25 hectares of land. It was a built-up company but it had no machines. I took a loan from the Federal Government’s National Economic Reconstruction Fund. We were producing, then I had some problems with the factory. I explained to Gupta because at that time he was trading and exporting cocoa with my company, BENL. In the process again, he said he wanted another company’s name to be dealing in rubber from Ilushin , Ogun State. I gave him Nibco Nigeria Limited. Bolawole was coined from my name and my wife’s. My wife is Bola and I am Wole. Nibco is Ogini and Bola Company. ‘Ni’ came from Ogini; B came from Bola. So, I gave it to him and he was using it at Ilushin to buy rubber. At this time, I did it to assist a friend – no emoluments, no gratification, no payment, nothing. He was not paying anything.


Q: But he was using the name of the company to do business…

Yes, he was using the company to trade and do business. In 2005 when I had a problem with my palm kernel factory, he was aware of it. He asked why I was wasting my time and that instead of him handling Bolawole alone, I should come over. He said instead of me to be a director, I should be the executive chairman. So, I joined him in doing the day-to-day running of the company. After joining him, the company started improving based on my goodwill in government, my contacts and the fact that I am from Osun State. All the suppliers of our cocoa are from there and they saw a Nigerian in the company. Initially, he was running it as a one-man business, doing small trading with it, buying maybe five to 10 tons of cocoa. Between August 2005 that I joined and 2008, the company expanded by almost 200 per cent. Our volume of business increased. Then he told me that for us to access a facility from the bank, and for him (because he is a chartered accountant), to be doing business with the bank, while I supervised the procurement of raw materials we were exporting, he wanted his name in the company. Because I have worked in the Internal Affairs before, I know that before you can bring an expatriate in, you have to get a business permit, so I incorporated his name into the company as a managing director. So he started signing as a managing director, while I was the chairman.

Q: What happened after you incorporated his name into the company?

From there, based on activities, the business, the volume, we were recognised by banks. The banks were giving us facilities but those facilities were being collateralised by his personal and my personal networks. I supplied all the securities, my properties, my net worth, and my wife’s net worth. So, we were getting big facilities from banks.

In the process also, through my goodwill in the federal civil service where I worked for about 14 years before I voluntarily retired as a deputy secretary, we were able to make some contacts and get export expansion grants from the Federal Ministry of Trade and the Nigerian Export Promotion Council. I was shuttling between Lagos and Abuja. I took more than 72 return flights, to and fro, that is travelling about 144 times between 2006 and 2013. I was the accredited representative of Bolawole with the Federal Government. I secured for the company N6bn grants in about five years.

Q:What were the grants meant for?

All those grants were meant for the expansion of the business, adding value to the business, diversification of the business, increase in foreign exchange, transfer of technology and backward integration, etc. Apart from all my personal properties used to collect the loans, I had over 15 acres of plantation where I had cocoa and palm kernel. That enhanced our grants from the Federal Government because we were already trying to show backward integration by planting cocoa and other things. But I kept telling him all that period that we could not continue the way we were doing things and that a day would come when the government would ask us what we did with the money. We don’t have any property of our own; we were not diversifying into anything and not employing more Nigerians. Instead, we were employing Indian expatriates, some of them could not speak English, so the value chain was not increasing.

Q: What was his reaction to that?

Each time I asked him because I was always interested in the manufacturing sector; I worked in the Federal Ministry of Industries. I also worked in finance, internal affairs, trade, and commerce ministries. I worked in Cabinet Office as an administrative officer. I said instead of leasing warehouses, let us build our own based on what we have got from the government because the money we got was for us to show appreciation to encourage us more. But instead of that, he was just sending money abroad.

Q: What did you do when you noticed that the money was being taken abroad?

I initially thought the money was being used to pay our creditors who were bringing us machines but at the end of the day, there was nothing to show for it except to tell me that we were making losses.

Q: Were you not carried along as he was allegedly taking the money abroad?

He was the one in charge of accounts and everything. I was not totally carried along because I did not bother myself with all those things as I was concentrating on the procurement aspect. As a result of that, the Federal Government identified us as one of the best exporters in Nigeria in 2013.

Q: What was his disposition when you started challenging him about the way he was running the business?

I started noticing that instead of us reinvesting with the money we collected from the government and the profit we were making here, he was using it to acquire properties all over the world such as in Dubai, US, in UK, New Delhi and Bombay in India, etc. He was changing houses and moving from Ikoyi to Victoria Island and from VI to Ikoyi. He has been here for 30 years.

Q: Was that also without your knowledge?

It was with my knowledge as he would say it was because of rent and other flimsy reasons.

Q: Do you think he was able to get away with all this because of the memorandum and articles of association reached between the two of you?

There was no MoU. To be frank, I had never been in the private sector before. I just believed that as a sincere friend whom I assisted, he should be honest enough. He was only giving me a commission on the goods we were buying. I was not taking a salary, I was not taking benefits, I was not taking the director’s fees, and I was not paid any other allowances.

Q: When you noticed that you were not getting what you rightly deserved, what did you do?

In 2016, I started asking him for my benefits for all the things I had done. Even the company at Ilesha, at times he used it, which is my own personal property. The certificate of occupancy is still with my name but we used it as part of collateral to get money from the bank. So I started asking from 2016, so what are my benefits? He would smile and tell me, “Don’t worry, I will make you fine.”

Q: Who is the signatory to the account?

We are both signatories to the account. But for me, I never had any bad intention; I never knew he had his own plans. When I started telling him that if anything happened to the money we had collected, he could run away and I would be the one to pay all the bank loans, he changed his disposition towards me. He started showing me the other side of him, antagonising me. We were doing the business informally because we shared the same office for the past 15 years. We were so close but I didn’t know closeness does not go into business. I started this discussion informally but when he was not forthcoming, I put it down in writing. I formally demanded my rights, my benefits and I calculated everything for the last 14 years and told him if he had given me anything, he should prove it. I told him also that I secured about N7bn for the company and I did not get anything. If a lawyer or broker should secure all the loans, you know what his benefits would be. I went to Abuja more than 72 times. If a lawyer should do that, he would take a minimum of 10 per cent on the over N7bn, yet I did not take any kobo and neither did the company give me any kobo.

Q: Don’t you think you started pursuing your benefits at the wrong time?

There is no wrong time for any right thing in life. I have my faults because I trusted him and we did not put some of the things in writing. Anytime we were having meetings with some buyers and suppliers, by 9 pm, I would be running to FESTAC where I live. One day, one of his expatriate friends asked him why I was living in FESTAC and whether he could not get a house for me in Ikoyi as the chairman of the company. He told him not to worry that he would make an arrangement in London or America for me and that I was living in my own personal house. I got the personal house he was referring to when I was in the civil service as far back as 1977.

Suddenly, one day, he gathered himself and his children and did a board meeting and removed my name as a signatory to the account.

Q: Are those children directors in the company?

They are also directors. They joined the company in 2014. One came in 2014 and another came in 2015.

Q: Was their employment with your knowledge?

Yes, it was with my knowledge. For me, I saw it as normal. It didn’t bother me.

Q: What happened to your company in Ilesha since you said you ran into debts?

The company assisted me to pay the loan for the factory in Ilesha which I owed Union Bank. They paid it and I repaid Bolawole later and I have the evidence. So I felt because of that, I owed him an obligation to be honest and accommodate him.

We continued with the business. I know we were making profits but he was declaring losses because he was the one in charge of the accounts. I told him we could not continue like that and that I wanted to quit and that he should give me my company. I calculated my own entitlements and it was about N637m. When he was still not forthcoming, I reported to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The EFCC advised that we had known each other for over 30 years and that as we were both over 70 years old, we should go and settle the matter. At that meeting, he agreed that he would pay some money but that he could not pay the N637m. We agreed on certain amounts he said he would pay by instalments.

Q: Has he paid your benefits?

Since that time he agreed to pay, he has reneged on his promise. Right now, the anti-graft agency is looking for him. We gave him the companies to trade with, not to sell them. No Indian man bears Oluwole. LESAG was formed taking LE from Oluwole, SA from Isaac and G from Ogini. All our companies have meaning to us. He told me openly that he was not willing to relinquish our company. This is because he also registered his own company called Nuray. For the 14 years we worked together, no business we did with Nuray succeeded. He said for him to pay all the money as agreed with the EFCC, we had to relinquish all our companies to him. The EFCC told him that was not the agreement he reached with us. The agreement was that these people have rendered claims; you tabulated it and said out of that, you would pay a certain amount of money. It is after that you can sit down and settle your companies whether they want you to continue, whether they want to remain there and whether they want you to buy them over.

Q: What you are really asking for is the payment of your benefits, I assume.

Yes. Only the period, I did not even demand profit sharing. I said as a director, the two of us are entitled to certain amounts of money; you are supposed to pay us, give us full medical facilities, vacation benefits which he was enjoying. Based on our activities, we were supposed to collect another grant in Abuja, but because he did not want me to know about it, forgetting that I was a civil servant before, he went to Abuja, wrote a letter to them that I was no longer in the company. Instead, he put some Indians’ names but the people said no and told him that Ogini had been accredited in their office as far back as 2008 and that I was the one who signed all the application forms and everything. They said I should be the one to collect the grant and that if I was no longer there, they wanted a board resolution that I had resigned or dead. They said that should be brought before they could change the accreditation signed because my photograph was there.

Q: Did he succeed with his plan to bypass you to get the grant?

Suddenly when he tried everything because he had been boasting that if it was going to cost him a billion naira, he would spend it and that Nigeria is a very cheap place and that he would get his way. I said OK. The people insisted that the procedure must be followed otherwise they would call the two of us to sit down to know what was going on.

Q: How was that incident resolved?

They phoned me and informed me about what was going on and I told them I was hale and hearty and that I had not resigned and that nothing was wrong with me. I told them I was demanding my benefits and claims, that was all, and that he was refusing to give me.

Q: What did he do when he could not access the grant?

Recently, a dispatch rider came with a letter and told us there was going to be an emergency extraordinary meeting which we never called since the inception of the business and that anybody could appoint a proxy to vote for him. He said one meeting would take place at Matori, Mushin, and that another one would take place at Sheraton Hotels, and that another one would take place at Adeleke Adedoyin. Matori is our office. Adeleke Adedoyin is a place he stayed before and had left about 10 years ago. We do not have anything to do with Sheraton. His intention was to do a kangaroo meeting and pass a resolution. I immediately rushed to my lawyer. My lawyer said they were up to something sinister. We got a court injunction from the Federal High Court to stop the meeting. That notwithstanding, my lawyer said we should go to the venue of the meeting to verify whether the meeting would hold or not. On getting there, they locked themselves up and refused to open the door for us. We found that curious – an office where I have been using for 15 years. The security man saw me at the gate with my lawyer, my wife and everybody, but refused to open the gate until when the EFCC people came and harassed the security man that they would break the gate and enter. It was then we had access to the place. On getting there, they were hiding inside the warehouse under the tables. We met four of them and the EFCC asked the security man why he said nobody was inside. He said he was given an instruction not to open the gate and that anytime they saw me outside, he should not open the gate. The EFCC operatives arrested them and asked them to produce their boss, Gupta. Since he sent that notice of the meeting, he had run away to America. Up until now, he is in America with his children.