One Woman’s Fight Against Impunity

By Dan Abubakar

Daily, we are faced with sundry manifestations of the gross impunity that rule the land in nearly every facet of governance and in the interaction of citizens with their institutions and even with one another.

The deterioration has long been coming to a head such that the more brazen the flouting of basic rules and abuse of common decency, the greater the likelihood of getting away with it.

Indeed so far have we descended the slippery slope of condoning – and being ruled by – criminality that it takes a very brave soul indeed to insist on things being done properly.

Like Mrs Maimuna Chionuma. After a quarter century of service at Union Homes Savings and Loans, she had her appointment as company secretary summarily terminated on March 20.  There was no Board to approve this step as is required in her case being the Company Secretary duly appointed by a Board.

Even after having  terminated  her appointment precipitately, she was given a written warning not to divulge or disclose information pertaining to the company, not  because she was bound by an oath (non-existent) to keep company secrets, she was “threatened”   with both civil and criminal actions against her including reporting her to the Nigerian Bar Association and that she could be summoned at any time to answer queries. All of which in its true sense is tantamount to a ‘gagging order’.

For good measure  her persecutors  – operatives of Aso Savings and Loans who had failed to consummate their takeover of Union Homes but had somehow browbeaten the regulatory authorities into believing otherwise – petitioned the Police hierarchy and the DSS in Abuja that the one Mrs Chionuma was planning to kill them!

But in reality, she and her family were being trailed, with strange movements around her home  and she persistently  received strange calls from unknown numbers even at odd hours of the day or night.

As has become the case in Nigeria, money is at the root of the evil.

What is the story?

The Lagos State Government, after a protracted legal case involving the demolition of several numbers of shops and other facilities, agreed to pay N2.5 billion Naira compensation to Union Homes and two other parties for the said demolition of their properties. The money rather than go to  Union Homes through the agreed Trust Account provided in the consent judgement,  was rather intercepted and illegally diverted by the operatives of Aso Savings and Loans who had failed to consumate their takeover of Union Homes and was never a party to the legal action that resulted in the compensation being awarded.

Why did the Lagos State Government dole out such money to a body that was not party to the settlement?

The Handling Solicitor upon getting information that the compensation sum had been paid out, sent a petition to the Lagos State Government demanding the reason for their paying the compensation to a third party.

The Lagos State Government quickly reached out to Aso requesting them  to officially acknowledge receipt of the said compensation.

Realizing the grave implications of their action, the Aso operatives insisted that Union Homes acknowledge receipt of the money and directed the Company Secretary of Union Homes to do so, a  request which the Company Secretary demurred since no such funds ever came to the coffers of the distressed institution.

Rather than pay down depositors who are being owed about N23 billion Naira and serving and retired staffers eking out a miserable existence,  50% of the compensation in the  sum of N1.250 billion Naira was said to have been paid to “political people” ( presumably politicians who it was claimed facilitated the payment of the compensation by the Lagos State government).

Another N75million Naira was said to have been paid as fees to consultants for supervising the sharing of the money to the “political people”.

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

From what was left, the powers-that-be at Aso decided to sequester N126 million Naira as “reimbursement to Aso for legal fees” . Magically, names of lawyers who were not in any court record as having participated in the legal process that culminated in the compensation being paid, suddenly appeared as beneficiaries.

No wonder the gag order on Mrs Chionuma. No wonder the perpetrators of what appears to be a brazen heist took the further step of petitioning the Police hierarchy in Abuja and the DSS alleging that Mrs Chionuma was planning to blackmail and kill them!

She honoured their invitation to Abuja where she stated her case in detail to the consternation of the interlocutors at the two institutions who were evidently shocked at the chutzpah of the petitioners and, therefore, refused to act on the expectation to have her detained.

Earlier in the year – in what is now obviously a calculated move to intimidate – one of the principal figures in this episode tried to warn off Mrs Chionuma thus: “You can get away with anything in Nigeria. It depends on the language you speak, who you know and your sex.” And of course on disposable cash to spread around the press, crooked cops and other enforcers.

One major question leaps out in this sordid saga.

Where were the regulatory authorities notably the CBN, SEC and NDIC?

When Aso made a bid for Union Homes in 2015, the whole transaction (Transaction Implementation Agreement – TIA) was supposed to have been consumated within 90 days. To date that has not been done and which meant  Union Homes and Aso remain two separate legal entities. But somehow Aso continued to successfully browbeat the regulatory authorities into believing that  Union Homes had been subsumed under Aso.

Many of the ingredients that have brought Nigeria prostrate are present in this tale: corruption, abuse of office, flagrant flouting of rules, intimidation.

When the few abusers of our commonwealth engage in such impunity, the society suffers. Institutions are eroded, values are debased, systems fail and banditry results.

In the case of Union Homes many retired staffers who could not claim any benefits have suffered untold hardships. Some have died. So have depositors to whom Mrs Chionuma and her colleagues were paying whatever little came in thus bringing down the exposure from 29 billion Naira in 2015/16 to about 23 billion Naira as at 2022.

The devastated state of Nigeria today with bandits in the bush and bandits in the corporate world is a result of the moral failing of people in a position to say no. And unless there is a critical mass ready to do so, we will continue to have failed institutions and hucksters as leaders.

Is all hope lost? One little company in distress on Ikorodu Road, Lagos is about to offer a cautionary tale.