Modupe Gbadeyanka
**Insist Wale Tinubu Must Go
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Shareholders of the embattled Oando Plc have maintained that the Group Chief Executive Officer of the firm, Mr Adewale Tinubu, must resign in the interest of all.
The aggrieved shareholders, under the umbrella of Trusted Shareholders Association of Nigeria (TSA), said Mr Tinubu has overstayed in the position.
Oando has been plunged into crisis lately, which resulted in it being suspended on the trading floors of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
The oil company had run to a Federal High Court in Lagos to stop a forensic audit of its affairs by auditors announced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), though it lost this bid because the judge, Justice Mohammed Aikawa, said the court lacked the jurisdiction to hear the matter and advised Oando to take its case to the Investment and Securities Tribunal (IST), set to entertain capital market disputes.
Speaking recently on the issue, National Chairman of TSA, Mr Mukhtar Mukhtar, said Mr Tinubu no longer serve the required purpose because he has overstayed.
“When people overstay in places, they compromise their corporate integrity and what happened (at Oando) was that they stripped some of the major assets of the company, both downstream and upstream and sold them to cronies and to themselves,” he said.
“Since the assets had been stripped, how would money come in? That is why you see that over the years, they stopped paying dividend, no capital appreciation, no bonuses to shareholders and yet management and board remunerations keep increasing,” he added quoting auditors of the company, Ernst and Young.
“If you remember from five-six years till date, Oando has not been a company; rather it has been a company in crisis, having lots of issues.
“The auditors appointed to audit Oando, having scrutinised its account, operations, expenses, finances and liabilities in relation to the asset of the company, came up with a very scary report, which tells everyone in clear terms that there are serious issues surrounding the company,” the Chairman said.
According to Mr Mukhtar, the main issue is “that the regulator should have acted long ago because as a sensible regulator, they foresee signs of trouble in companies because these companies have to render their financials and the regulator ought to have acted as a policeman; they must have their informants, must be doing their checks and balances.”
He added: “It is not a new fact that the regulators are being challenged, even the small steps they took, the compromised step of the suspension of the shares and the forensic audit, they are being challenged.
“I will commend the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for taking this proactive measure to suspend Oando and this is because they have read the situation that despite all the compromises, there is a problem with the company and because they are regulating the market, they are doing their job as they make investigations and have people who report to them”.
