The removal of the Managing Director of the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON), Mustafa Chike-Obi, by President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday was prompted by alleged cumulative offences committed by the former MD and his team, administration insiders and former members of the company’s board have told PREMIUM TIMES.

“The president has been inundated by complaints about the politicisation of AMCON by its leadership and the lack of transparency in the disposition of assets,” a presidency source said.

“The President had to act to halt the drift in the organisation, and restore efficiency and independence to its operations.”

This newspaper also learnt that the Ahmed Joda-led Transition Committee reported to the President that it observed lack of transparency and competitiveness in the way the company disposed of assets.

“The establishment of AMCON has been a central part of the reform agenda,” the committee said in its report. “Critical attention should be taken to ensure efficiency in its mandate.”

It then identified “lack of transparency in disposition of assets” as the key challenge facing the company, and recommended that Mr. Buhari take measures to ensure divesture of AMCON’s assets are “carried out in a transparent and competitive manner”.

AMCON was set up in 2010 following former CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido’s banking sector intervention, with the objectives of buying up Non Performing Loans (NPL) from the banks, re-capitalising them, and finding buyers to run them in a transparent manner.

Being the largest financial institution in the country today, with assets valued at about N5 trillion, insiders say AMCON was almost unilaterally run by Mr. Chike-Obi, who was said to consistently took orders only from former President Goodluck Jonathan, while he was in office, routinely bypassing the company’s board as well as key regulators such as the CBN which has a 50 per cent stake in the business.

The former AMCON boss’ running battle with the CBN and Ministry of Finance, the two joint owners of the company, repeatedly triggered friction among officials and occasionally grounded the company’s operations, insiders say.

Mr. Chike-Obi’s traducers also accused him of being engaged in non-transparent and non-competitive sale of assets of some troubled companies, a charge he repeatedly denied but which his critics repeatedly tabled before the President.

In June, a lawyer, Ajibola Aribisala (SAN), raised alarm that AMCON deliberately sold Delta Steel Company at N28billion as against the N33billion offered by a Chinese company, China Polaris Technologies Company Ltd, despite the latter’s offer to pay immediately.

While urging President Muhammadu Buhari to cancel the deal, the lawyer said there was fraud in the deal as the company that purportedly won the bid, Premium Steel & Mines Ltd, was only incorporated when the bidding was already in full progress on December 14, 2014.

Mr. Chike-Obi, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, was also accused of shady financial deals with debtors, politicisation of decisions, flagrant disregard of the principles of corporate governance, contempt of the directives of the regulatory authorities, among others.

“The former MD’s involvement in financial scandals, flagrant abuse of power, disregard of the management board decisions are some of the reasons Mr. President sacked him,” said a source familiar with the president’s decision and the operations of the company.

“Whenever CBN or Ministry of Finance drew his attention to any misdemeanour, his excuse was that he was not an ordinary MD of a bank, and so could not be under the supervisory power of the CBN,” the source, who requested not to be named, said.
Another source, a former board member, said Mr. Chike-Obi always had the ears of ex-President Jonathan, and that he was in the habit of disregarding the directives of the Ministry of Finance and the CBN, citing “presidential directive” or “order from above”.

“There were several shouting matches between him and board members,” the source said. “He subjected several board members to verbal abuse and he made it impossible for board members to oversight his activities. He carried on with a lot of swagger, telling whoever cared to listened that he had presidential cover.”

He always looked down upon members of the Board of Directors of the company, and sidelined them in taking crucial decisions demanding their inputs.

“Some of us made sure the President became aware of all this, and we knew that we the change in the leadership of the country, his days in AMCON were numbered.

“Now that he and his team have been removed, I think the company can now be repositioned.”
In his response to the allegations, the former managing director denied the alleged rip-off in the sale of Delta Steel, saying the decision was taken after the approval of the Federal Executive Council, AMCON board and CBN.

“Haba! Everything about Delta Steel was discussed thoroughly at exco, board and approved by CBN,” Mr. Chike-Obi told PREMIUM TIMES.

“It is [people with] selfish interests that are peddling that garbage. There are board and exco minutes and CBN letters to prove this.”

Mr. Chike-Obi did not however respond to other allegations bordering on arbitrariness, highhandedness, among others.




www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/188657-why-buhari-fired-amcon-md-mustafa-chike-obi.html

It was done for the sake of national cleanup



The two posters below me...kindly jump into the nearest lagoon. Tenk

It's for the best...

Its [size=20pt]LadyF[/size] again

accusations with no hard proof

(Yawns)

His special assistant on media will soon deny it

WTF

So what if it turns out that these accusations are nothing more than a good old fashioned witch-hunt!? What ever happened to being 'innocent until proven guilty'!?

It's becoming more apparent that any self-respecting and accomplished individual should have nothing to do with public office in that god-forsaken country! If you're not from the right ethnic group, religion, social status or ready to 'play ball' then be prepared to have all manner of accusations leveled against you in a bid to rubbish your good name and get rid of you!

BABA Go slow and steady is working cleaning all the clueless one's mess. Nigeria will forever be greatful to PMB after his 4 years in power while haters, tanoids and wailers will continue to wail until they jam live transformers. Over to you wailers!! >>>>>>
www.nairaland.com/attachments/2739269_clvrh3ow8aawwho_jpegb9410a887cc29efdba8c24c0caffdad6

Punch, The Nation, Premium times and co busy spreading rumors and defaming characters..

You can accuse Buhari of anything but surely not celebrating mediocrity...I voted you well my president.

Witch-hunting the igbos since 1960.....

Worefa. He's gone now. Everybody should calm down now.

IGBOSON1:
So what if it turns out that these accusations are nothing more than a good old fashioned witch-hunt!? What ever happened to being 'innocent until proven guilty'!?

It's becoming more apparent that any self-respecting and accomplished individual should have nothing to do with public office in that god-forsaken country! If you're not from the right ethnic group, religion, social status or ready to 'play ball' then be prepared to have all manner of accusations leveled against you in a bid to rubbish your good name and get rid of you!

Why is it now suddenly an ethnic issue??!

Duru009:
Witch-hunting the igbos since 1960.....

It is now a witch-hunt because the guy is Igbo??! O di egwu.....

and who says the new guy at the helm of affairs won't do worse than is being alleged or take "orders from above "?

we should be building institutions and not persons. the more we look for saints to hold political offices, the more will falter and things get worse.

I can only accept change in Aso rock as the reason for the change in leadership of amcon and not the baseless allegations being peddled on the pages of newspapers. Any person or organisation that has genuine grievances against amcon should approach the law courts. And if there are loopholes that allows the head of amcon to abuse his office, the laws should be amended to take care of it. That is what is done in serious countries

Sincere9gerian:
and who says the new guy at the helm of affairs won't do worse than is being alleged or take "orders from above "?

we should be building institutions and not persons. the more we look for saints to hold political offices, the more will falter and things get worse.

I can only accept change in Aso rock as the reason for the change in leadership of amcon and not the baseless allegations being peddled on the pages of newspapers. Any person or organisation that has genuine grievances against amcon should approach the law courts. And if there are loopholes that allows the head of amcon to abuse his office, the laws should be amended to take care of it. That is what is done in serious countries

i will rather check my new guy than stick with GEJ's old guy. Ifeanyi UBA. ...you are next!!

Duru009:
Witch-hunting the igbos since 1960.....

You are the enemy of yourselves, No ibo man trust his brother not to talk an outsider... The head of NNPC appointed by PMB is an Ibo man but your brothers came out screaming his a delta ibo.... WTF!!!! If you aint pleased with the reformation of the country you can take the shortest exit outta Nigeria

Jonathan quickly became a useless leader because he did not have vision or wisdom, so making things work correctly or making good decisions became a major challenge during the last administration.
In fact, for the past 20 years, things in general and also in all areas in Nigeria have no been done correctly or accordingly. Any sensible individual understands this facts and needs no explanation why president Buhari continues to make changes....It is simply part of house cleaning.
We want change, we need things in the country to be done the right way; expect more firing...Nothing personal, but just parts of the process of "CHANGE"

The same Mustafa Chike-obi that Ahmed Musa has been trying to get across to cos of those oil workers from Niger-Delta? Ok.

Weird name combo, by the way.

Please I have no comment on his removal or whatever, however, I want to ask one question....Is this guy in question(MUSTAFA CHIKE OBI) a Muslim or a Christian?, because there're no practicing muslim of IGBO extraction

thewarrior72:
Please I have no comment on his removal or whatever, however, I want to ask one question....Is this guy in question(MUSTAFA CHIKE OBI) a Muslim or a Christian?, because there're no practicing muslim of IGBO extraction

A lot of igbos are Muslims....... One of my uncles is a Muslim

And who remembers why AMCON was set up? This is Nigeria where a doctor who was sent to revive a patient ends up strangling her.

thewarrior72:
Please I have no comment on his removal or whatever, however, I want to ask one question....Is this guy in question(MUSTAFA CHIKE OBI) a Muslim or a Christian?, because there're no practicing muslim of IGBO extraction

mustapha was just a name their father chike obi the top known mathematician name his children other siblings have yororoba name Zik of africa did the same thing naming their kids muslims and yorubas names to represent stupidd WAZOBIA they are not muslims

This is what you get when a president openly admitted that stealing is not corruption. jonathan really destroyed Nigeria.

san316:
Worefa. He's gone now. Everybody should calm down now.

No no no.... it's not enough ...it's not enough..he should return all d money he stole then we can talk about being calm

efilefun:
You are the enemy of yourselves, No ibo man trust his brother not to talk an outsider... The head of NNPC appointed by PMB is an Ibo man but your brothers came out screaming his a delta ibo.... WTF!!!! If you aint pleased with the reformation of the country you can take the shortest exit outta Nigeria

yorobba man talk what you no when it comes to trust Yoruba are the last people on this earth to trust they will betray you sell you for nothing...jonathan tried it during his election the obas took bribe from him and went and vote for buhari..... mistake jona did was trying to please you guys he could have ignored yorobbas to rot after all you will not vote for him why worry about people that cant stand you...delta igbos never said that they are not igbos you have seen numerous igbo deltas preaching about their igboness but your people will tell them they are not igbos... what do you people want from the ZOO republic? your people are very confusing u say A today tomorrow u say B?

Hmm

Good to know

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upon say the guy carry mustafa add for em name... Baba no dey tryooo

How can person bear musty obi

B