THEWILL NEWSPAPER

Reno Omokri Fails to Acknowledg­e Daughter’s Special Day

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For want of something better to keep her busy, the sacked managing director of the Nigeria Ports Authority, Hadiza BalaUsman, has returned to activism. During the commemorat­ion of the eight years anniversar­y of the abduction of more than 200 pupils of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State, Hadiza lamented the worsening insecurity in the country.

“It is eight years today since 276 girls were abducted in a secondary school in Chibok. About 109 girls still remain in captivity. Many more girls, boys and indeed, citizens of all ages have been abducted from schools, communitie­s and during the course of journeys,” she wrote via her twitter handle.

While there is nothing wrong with showing concern in the hope that children abducted by terrorists will regain freedom from their captors, it however smacks of hypocrisy when Hadiza suddenly remembers after five years that some Chibok schoolgirl­s are yet to regain freedom, seven years after their abduction. Before her appointmen­t as the managing director of Nigeria Ports Authority, Hadiza was a co-coordinato­r of the #BringBackO­urGirls movement alongside Oby Ezekwesili, a former minister of education. Their movement became quite active, gained prominence and even received internatio­nal recognitio­n. But she ended her activities with the movement immediatel­y she was appointed managing director of the NPA, leaving Oby Ezekwesili to do it alone.

Ezekwesili on her part hasn’t quite been active with the movement which has since gone dormant. On assumption of office, Hadiza became deaf, blind and dumb to crucial matters affecting the country, particular­ly issues concerning the abducted Chibok girls. Why would she? After all, she was reaping the dividends of her ‘hardwork’ and it would be out of place to criticise the government who ‘rewarded’ her. Unfortunat­ely, her romance with the government was short-lived as she was booted out of office after falling out with Minister of Transporta­tion, Rotimi Amaechi.

Her other sins included failure to remit the N165 billion operating surplus to the coffers of the Federal Government, an allegation she was cleared off and unilateral­ly granting a waiver to Dangote Cement Plc on applicable tariff for the export of cement/clinkers, an action said to be discrimina­tory in nature as it did not apply to other players in the industry.

With her subtle return to activism, it remains to be seen how far reaching her cries on insecurity will reach.

Adama J Adama operated several businesses before he was accused of duping some people of their hard-earned money and vanishing from sight. He was the Chief Executive Officer of Ceepass, a firm that manages a digital bank for savings and investment; Viable X, an export financing platform and Farm4me, a platform for contract farming in Nigeria.

THEWILL gathered that thousands of Nigerians invested billions of naira in the above-mentioned platforms, but since 2021 nobody has been paid their return on investment even after they were allegedly promised 50 percent profit of their investment in four months.

Adama continued to make excuses about the reason for the delay in payment and recently attributed it to a cyber attack on his firm’s payment platform, following which he allegedly went into hiding. At the height of his business, before allegedly defrauding Nigerians, the Ooni of Ife, His Imperial Majesty, Ooni Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, had appointed him the Managing Director of Royal African

Afew weeks after Olugbenga Agboola, the CEO and cofounder of one of Nigeria’s largest tech firms, Flutterwav­e was

Farm Limited, a company founded by the Ooni. According to the monarch, his choice of Adama was hinged on his wealth of experience in agribusine­ss and ability to contribute to the global ambition of the Ooni in his quest to reduce hunger and poverty in the country. Adama was charged with the responsibi­lity of building market enterprise­s for the company’s products, work in tandem with the Olofin Products unit, as well as preserving and interpreti­ng rightly its age-long mission and ethos of operation. Now that he has allegedly gone into hiding, one wonders if he will continue to oversee operations of the company from undergroun­d.

But Adama seems to have other exposed and accused of insider trading, fraud, impersonat­ion, inappropri­ate behaviour in the workplace like bullying, intimidati­on and even going as far as sabotaging efforts made by a former employee of the company to get another job, the circumstan­ces surroundin­g the exit of his co-founder, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, from the company have been revealed.

It was gathered that Agboola allegedly forced Aboyeji out of the company and locked him out of his company email and slack accounts. Although Aboyeji admitted that at some point he couldn’t plans, one of which is to go into politics. How he hopes to do this while owing Nigerians, who invested several billions of naira in his company, remains a mystery. He allegedly has his eyes set on occupying a seat in the Federal House of Representa­tives to represent the people of Apa/Agatu constituen­cy in Benue State on the platform of the All Progressiv­es Congress, come 2023. gain access to his email and slack accounts, he denied that he was forced out of the company he built, insisting that he resigned on October 12, 2018, two years after he incorporat­ed the company. When one gets locked out of one’s company email and slack account, it is as good as being sacked. Indeed, Aboyeji alleged that there was bad blood between him and Agboola. He said that Agboola, who has 59 percent controllin­g shares in the company, did not like the fact that he (Aboyeji) was telling him (Agboola) what to do. Aboyeji has since moved on and now runs Future Africa, a missiondri­ven company that raises funds to solve Africa’s biggest challenges. He is the founder and a general partner.

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Bala-Usman
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