By Steve Osuji
Last weekend I was driving past the imposing NESTOIL TOWER in Victoria Island when my eyes caught the ugly red markings on the building.
Probably because I was busy admiring the lush aesthetics of the upper levels of the architectural masterpiece of a structure, I wasn’t quick to notice the horde of policemen besieging the building.
REPOSSESSION OF NESTOIL TAKEN, the scrawly writing on the pristine wall says.
I was later to find that NESTOIL, one of the thriving indigenous oil firms in Nigeria had been locked in a death duel with First Bank of Nigeria (FBN).
My finding online suggests that NESTOIL owes Nigeria’s premier bank a whopping two billion dollars ($2 billion), and the bank had court orders to wind down the assets of NESTOIL which includes the lush tower.
Without prejudice to the details of the matter and the injunctions and counter injunctions from the courts, one just wonders whether a commercial dispute between customer and bank should necessarily lead to bare-knuckle, zero sum duels.
This column opines that business partners who have traded with each other for years and have made enormous gains for each other, should never end up as mortal enemies. One should never end up liquidating the other.
Whatever the dispute may be, there must be channels for wholesome mediation, arbitration and peaceful resolution.
Unless of course there’s a case of irretrievable bankruptcy, one partner must bend over backwards to ensure not to extirpate the other.
Commenting without arbitrating, the two billion dollars of debt in question couldn’t possibly be the principal sum of the facility. One doubts that any bank in Nigeria has such an amount to dole out to a single customer to start with. So it’s probably a consortia of banks, which makes the burden lighter … as arbitration goes on its usual slow march.
This huge sum must also represent the compounded sum. The bulk of the initial loan may well have been recovered in most cases.
Compounded interests on loans, especially huge loans, are usually subjects of dispute all over the world and from ages past.
Therefore, such commercial disputes are resolved amicably and sustainably.
The point is that business ventures should never be wilfully foreclosed or bankrupted over this nature of dispute that can be amicably resolved. Especially so if it is a going concern.
Further, on the face of it, without digging deeper, repossessing and locking down the headquarters of a huge going concern such as Nestoil gives off bad optic at first sight: To the general public and investors.
It means that the Bank has crippled the business, making it unable to even earn revenues to keep servicing the facility. Indeed, there seems to be an overly effusion of bad blood tinged with bad faith, even.
This singular action is bound to have both existing and would-be customers thinking twice about their bank. As it is said in traditional lores, let the second wife beware for the rod with which the first wife was bruised is kept at the corner, waiting to be pressed to service again!
The point being made here by this column is that there should never be room for what may seem like a ZERO SUM GAME in longstanding business relationships.
LAST LINE: A pristine edifice of such imposing presence on the horizon of Lagos should never be pockmarked with such ugly scrawls nor should it become an eyesore and a testament to what may seem like ill will…
Osuji was editor at THISDAY and The Guardian.
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