“Like I said, I’ve noticed this “I” statement and trend in you lately which never existed in our relationship for years. Babawande, let me remind you, you did not take the risk alone. We both did.”


Word of Advice: NEVER TRUST A RONU LANDLORD AS A BUSINESS PARTNER

This is not a story about an airline. Not primarily anyway.

While an airline is integral to the story, it is the furious legal and social battle surrounding it that has made Green Africa Airways - once touted as the Nigerian answer to Ryanair or Southwest Airlines - take centre stage. This battle has turned childhood friends and business partners into sworn enemies, pitching previously inseparable families against each other in a maelstrom of high-powered lawyers, angry investors, multiple court cases and EFCC petitions, and even (alleged) arson

Before we get into all that, first, a quick primer about Green Africa Airways and why there was once such a buzz around it.

Green Africa Airways was billed as the low-cost airline that would do for Nigerian aviation what Henry Ford’s mass-produced cars did for American car ownership in the 20th century. Something, something…democratise…something, something…for the common man. You’ve heard it a thousand times before and you get the basic picture: flying is fundamentally expensive, especially in a country whose monthly minimum wage works out at just under $50.

An airline that could figure out how to charge less than its competitors and still remain in business would quickly become the most successful in the Nigerian market, and would possibly help in improving the overall viability of Nigeria’s 21 local and international airports. (Currently, only four of that number have sufficient passenger numbers to pay for their own expenses without government intervention.)

The Green Africa solution was as simple as it was elegant - cut costs wherever possible. Jet aircraft burn more fuel making them more expensive to run in a Nigerian market where sourcing dollars for Jet-A1 is a challenge? Use turboprop aircraft instead. Training and type rating pilots across different aircraft makes and models in the same fleet the way conventional airlines do it is time and capital intensive? Buy a fleet made up exclusively of ATR 72 turboprops so that pilots only need to be rated on that one type, and air crews are more interchangeable

Even the choice of colour scheme is part of the ruthless cost-cutting since the colour white on aircrafts fades less quickly and requires less pigment than other colours, reducing the repainting frequency and takeoff weight of the aircraft which saves money. Basically, in Nigeria’s extremely price-conscious market, Green Africa would to do aviation what per-second billing did to telecoms in the 2000s.


With that out of the way, our story now begins in 1983 in the sleepy town of Ile-Ife, Osun State. In this town which is recognised by most of West Africa’s Yoruba ethnic group as the ancient cradle of their civilisation, a boy was born to the Afolabi family. According to Yoruba naming customs, it was believed that the boy was the reincarnation of a male ancestor, and so his father Francis gives him the name “Babawande” (“father has returned”)

Nearby was the Awosika family, which had maintained a long-standing relationship with the Afolabi family. This family, dotted with successful entrepreneurs and corporate figures including a former First Bank chair inhabited an entirely different space from the Afolabis on the socioeconomic spectrum of Ile-Ife, but that did not stop the 2 families from being close friends.


Pic : Former First Bank chair Ibukun Awosika

Abiiii

As Babawande grew through his childhood, the Awosikas’ son Kenny became his best friend. Both families became so close that on more than one ocassion, Kenny’s dad Kolawole paid school fees on behalf of Babawande’s younger siblings Taiwo and Kehinde. The idea of repayment was neither discussed nor expected - such was the level of closeness between both families.

As the years went by, Kenny left Nigeria to obtain an education and build a career in the USA, but both friends never lost touch with each other and their relationship remained strong. So strong in fact, that in 2006, after finding his way to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA and realising that he was $12,700 short on his tuition, Babawande turned to his best friend for help.

His best friend as always, was all too willing to help. Kenny signed up to be his student loan guarantor - something that needless to say, only a tiny proportion of Americans would willingly do for someone they are not related to. Thus Babawande avoided losing his admission and possibly having to return to Ile-Ife at that crucial juncture in his life

A few years later, Babawande - let’s call him Wande - actually defaulted on a couple of payments triggering a number of stressful phone calls between Kenny and the loan company, but even that was not enough to shake the friendship that these 2 had nurtured for nearly 30 years. In fact that was just the start of the close personal and business relationship that they would share going forward.

Sometime in September 2013, having long discussed dreams of someday setting up a business together to make an impact in Nigeria, the 2 friends were having a random conversation on Google Hangouts. As you will see below via the conversation transcript, this informal chat is what became the basis for the business entity they would later register together in the state of Maryland.

Both friends excitedly discussed their plans to do something huge in Nigeria, even debating whether to fully involve Kenny’s girlfriend in the business from the start and how she would potentially feel about visiting Nigeria.

Eventually, Babawande and Kenny got down to setting up enterprise email accounts for this business and choosing a name for it. Bear in mind that at this point, the proposed business did not even have a well-defined focus just yet - such was the level of mutual enthusiasm and trust between both men. They eventually settled on the name “Green White Group” in an unsubtle nudge to their dreams of making a huge splash in Nigeria’s business landscape

Just like that nearly 10 years ago, our 2 friends started on a journey whose culmination at least one of them could not possibly foresee.

It is at this point that the story started taking a huge left turn for Kenny - not that he knew it at the time. Over the next 2 years, while he busily threw himself into the business of registering, funding and building Green White Group in Maryland, USA, he had no idea that his best friend was planning to perform an epic rug-pull on him in the future. They did everything together, from dealing with IRS tax issues to negotiating a deal to bus a Volvo bus for an intercity transport business in Nigeria

For the time being, there was no doubt that the business relationship between both men centred around Green White Group, which they co-owned. This is illustrated by the images below taken from the investor pitch deck for GWG’s Nigerian road transport company called MyCityBus

If there is any doubt about the level of involvement and commitment that Wande displayed to the business of running Green White Group, the email conversation below should clear that up decisively. Keep this in mind because it become important later in this story.

Sometime in 2014, Wande came up with an idea to start an airline in Nigeria. A bus transport company was just not ambitious enough for him and he believed they could do more. A low-cost airline following the JetBlue model could potentially unlock hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value and put their names up in lights forever, just the way Wande always envisioned. Kenny, though initially hesitant, began to warm up to the idea

He warmed up to it so much in fact, that he personally handled practically all of the branding and design work that is recognisable today as “Green Africa Airways.” Here, take a look

The full email exchange is avail
Available in the link below. In fact, even the name “Green Africa Airways” also came out of an email exchange between both friends during this period. Kenny also brought the first set of seed investors into what was then known as “Air Africa” before they settled on the name “Green Africa Airways.”


https://www.scribd.com/document/654249724/Origin-of-GAA-Logo

Keep all of this in mind because it is important information

In case you are wondering how on earth I have access to all of this information, the answer is “because it’s in court.” All of these documents technically have been on public record in Lagos State since 2020 as part of a bitter legal dispute that remains unresolved to date. What happened?

As you can see below, Green Africa Airways - let’s call it GAA - initially pitched to investors as a fully owned subsidiary of Green White Group, which Wande and Kenny co-owned. But something else entirely was happening on the ground in Nigeria. At this time, Kenny was singlehandedly funding GAA’s operations from his personal account in the USA and raising investment from his friends and family in the US, while Wande was in Nigeria pursuing the gruelling NCAA licencing process for GAA

Kenny first voiced a concern when Wande proposed that instead of writing to the NCAA as “Green White Group”, they should instead write using the letterhead of the Nigerian entity “Green Africa Airways Limited.”

Kenny wanted to know how his interests would be represented since he was a part owner of Green White Group and did not have shareholding in this new Nigerian business entity. By this time, had had spent as much as $20,000 of his own money on the project. Wande assured him that this was only a temporary arrangement to get around NCAA rules against foreign ownership of local airlines. Once they got the licence, he assured his friend, everything would be sorted out!

If you groaned while reading this exchange, that is probably because you instantly recognised the classic signature of a manipulator and a confidence trickster in that conversation: The feigned hurt at what was a perfectly reasonable question; the “don’t worry, just trust me”, which leverages a pre-existing relationship between both parties; the “I can’t believe you think I would do that to you”emotional blackmail; the way the victim immediately backed away from pursuing a satisfactory answer to his valid question; the little pat on his head from the smug conman afterward.

Kenny crucially did not recognise any of this.

This was after all, his childhood friend whom he had known for decades; the man for whom he had stood as a student loan guarantor; the man whose family was tight friends with his own; the man who had squatted in his house after graduating from Stanford Business School. Why on earth would he of all people try to cheat him out of his equity in an airline that they had built together brick by brick off the back of his personal money, from a Google Hangouts chat to a multimillion dollar investment opportunity?

As it turned out, that is exactly what Wande was doing in Nigeria. After using Kenny’s expertise and funding to sort out GAA’s branding and build its IT systems, as well as raise over $73,000 from seed investors - something that catalysed much larger subsequent investments - he was finally ready to cut his childhood friend loose. Now was his time to become the multimillionaire rockstar founder he always wanted to be - without having to share the limelight with Kenny Awosika the rich kid who did not deserve the things that he had.

On GAA’s CAC registration documents, Kenny’s name was conspicuously missing. In its place was Wande’s younger brother Taiwo Afolabi (remember him?)

Even worse, Wande attempted to cover his tracks by incorporating 2 new entities in Delaware and London called ‘Green White Group’ without Kenny’s knowledge

I love Green Africa...... They make my travel less expensive

At the point when he discovered this, the alarm bells finally at long last, went off inside Kenny’s head, and he took legal advise. First came a sternly-worded demand letter to Wande informing him that Kenny expected his shareholding to be reflected on the company’s books immediately.

Isobug:
I love Green Africa...... They make my travel less expensive

What that had no effect, the next course of action was a petition to Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Explaining what happened in an excerpt from the subsequent petition, Kenny said:


“While I was making effort to secure investors, I discovered I was duped me by Mr, Babatunde Afolabi by converting all the monies I sent to him to his personal use and with false pretenses, he fraudulently registered Green White Group (GWG) UK and Green White Group (GWG) Delaware without including my name. Babawande Afolabi then linked GWG UK as parent company to Green Africa Airways, Nigeria (now worth $54 Million pre-Series B valuation). It was at this time that I discovered had been scammed by Mr. Babawande Afolabi.”

The extent to which Kenny was used by Wande in setting up GAA can be seen below in an excerpt from the EFCC petition.

Realising that they had also been scammed by the fraudulent de-linking of GAA from the original Green White Group, a group of seed investors also petitioned the EFCC about Wande’s giant advance fee fraud scheme which had collectively left them $73,500 out of pocket

Helinues why are accommodating landlords always scammers to the point they can never be trusted by Thier fellow ronu ?

Now it gets really dark from here, so feel free to have a stretch and come back later.

Wande’s response to all of this was as silent as it was sociopathic. First, he filed an action at the High Court of Lagos State contending that the EFCC investigation “infringed on his fundamental rights” and that he was a victim of “harassment.” The full document available here is a truly horrifying read. Incredible lie after incredible lie; whopper after whopper