Shareholders of Oando Plc have advised the current management of the company under the leadership of Mr Wale Tinubu to step down in the interest of all stakeholders.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos had last week dismissed a case filed by Oando PLC against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking to stop SEC from conducting a forensic audit on the company and also lift a technical suspension placed on its shares.
The presiding judge, Justice Mohammed Aikawa explained that the court lacked jurisdiction over the matter and advised Oando to take its case to the Investment and Securities Tribunal (IST)
According to the shareholders, the almost 19 years management structure has ‘overstayed’ and nolonger serve the required purpose.
Under the aegis of Trusted Shareholders Association of Nigeria (TSA), the shareholders argued that “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.
Quoting auditors of the company, Ernst and Young, the National Chairman of TSA, Alhaji Mukhtar Mukhtar 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”.
Explaining further, Mukhtar said: “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.
“That having scrutinised all its accounts, they came up with the report that the liabilities of that company have surpassed its total assets almost over N260 billion. The credible auditors with integrity gave their final verdict that the company or any of its subsidiaries cannot continue as a company. Once a company’s liabilities are greater than its assets, there is no company.
“Some of our members told the National Assembly and I helped protest in about two or three places calling on the regulators to act and the regulators acted with some compromises. Such a thing cannot be done in the US, Europe and Asia because the regulators are there to protect shareholders, not to protect the interest of few people in government who have been going to pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to compromise.
“What the regulator should do in every other country is that first of all, if there are evidences or signs of infractions in any company, the first thing you do is to sack that management, constitute a forensic audit, and suspend the shares of the company. SEC on the other hand took two decisions but did not sack the management.
