The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), said it’s facing cheap blackmail from operators of organisations with non-performing loans it inherited from Nigerian banks, saying the debts totalled over N4 trillion.
The situation was made known by Head of AMCON’s Corporate Communications Unit, Mr Jude Nwauozor at press briefing on Friday in Lagos.
Nwauozor communicated that some institutions such as Arik Air and about 12, 000 others have been adamant to pay the monies they took from banks in loans to support their business at inception.
He mentioned that chief among the difficult debtors is Arik Air and its sister companies.
Owned by Sir Johnson Arumemi-Ikhide, the companies, according to AMCON’s claim have a combined debt of over N455bn.
Instead of the debtors paying up the humongous debts, the report said they recoursed to blackmailing AMCON officials.
According to Nwauozor: “Arik owes AMCON N227,637,469,394.34 billion; Rockson Engineering N163,502, 837, 397.75billion and Ojemai Farms N14, 031, 457, 980.71 billion.
“The fact of the matter is that no matter the smear campaign he is sponsoring against AMCON, these debts must be recovered one way or the other. The leadership of AMCON knows that there is no nice way of recovering debt. For that, obligors go to any length to assassinate the characters of both AMCON staff and management. They malign the name of AMCON, intimidate, and harass our personnel with every arsenal at their disposal.
“If at sunset AMCON is unable to recover the huge debt of over N4 trillion, it becomes the debt of the Federal Government of Nigeria for which taxpayers’ monies will be used to settle.
“The implication is that the general public will be made to pay for the recklessness of only a few individuals who continue to take advantage of the loopholes in our laws to escape their moral and legal obligations to repay their debts.”
Speaking further: “Managing these debts was challenging for the corporation, which still can liquidate Arik. But here we are still managing Arik, which was already insolvent and still insolvent even as we discussed.”
