On May 22, I wrote an article in this column on the travails of my friend and former member of the House of Representatives, Nze Chidi Duru, in the hands of the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
The article was prompted by the impunity of the management of PenCom, led by Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, and a brazen attempt to use subterfuge to hijack and deny a law abiding citizen the legitimate fruit of his labour.
Duru founded First Guarantee Pension Limited (FGPL). The licence was given to him in recognition of the work he did as a member of the House in bringing to fruition the Pension Reform Act of 2004.
Fola Adeola, the then chairman of the steering committee of the National Pensions Committee, was so pleased with the hard work Duru and his colleagues did that he encouraged him to become a player in the industry.
Duru took up the challenge and opted for the Pension Fund Administration (PFA) arm of the industry.
There were basically two arms one could participate in – the Pension Custodian (PC) for which about N1 billion was required as share capital and PFA requiring N150 million.
He applied and was granted a licence and then assembled 37 shareholders to promote FGPL in 2005.
For five years, the company struggled but the tide turned in 2010 when it became a profitable business. It paid its first dividend in 2011.
On February 23, 2011, PenCom, the industry regulator, released its annual report on the performance of each PFA and categorised FGPL as the most improved in 2010.
But what happened afterward can only be imagined. It became “the more you look, the less you see.”
Rather than giving Duru a pat on the back for making FGPL profitable, PenCom wrote a spurious target examination report accusing its management of all manner of boardroom monkeyshines.
It was strange. Duru thought it was a misunderstanding with a regulator he naively thought meant well for the industry. But that was not to be.
The unfolding drama turned out to be a well-orchestrated ploy to push him out of the company and hijack it for keeps.
For five years, Duru battled to confront PenCom demons with facts and figures to prove they were wrong. The more he tried, the more his traducers dug in. Court judgments declaring PenCom’s actions illegal were ignored.
Attempts by two Attorneys General of the Federation and Ministers of Justice – Mohammed Adoke (former) and Abubakar Malami (incumbent) – to intervene were spurned.
Meanwhile, both the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were taking turns to either declare him wanted or arrest him.
The police went a step further to prefer a charge against Duru before a Magistrate’s Court in Abuja on alleged theft and forgery.
His sister, Christy Ekweonu, a director with the Ministry of Justice, was arrested by the EFCC on May 11, 2016 in lieu of his younger brother even when it knew he was in court in Lagos to answer charges it preferred against him.
She was detained in Abuja for 11 days.
In January this year, a lawyer friend of Duru’s came to represent a client at a Lagos High Court and saw his name on the cause list.
Without Duru’s knowledge, the EFCC had come to Lagos on October 5, 2015 to prefer a charge at the High Court on the same subject matter that had to do with PenCom target report.
It was a two-pronged assault.
While the anti-corruption agencies and the police were used to terrorise and overawe him, the media, especially online media, was used to demonise and diminish him using the bogey of corruption.
If he complained, his traducers shouted him down, branding him a felon running away from justice and urging him to clear his name with the EFCC.
While all these were going on, the interim management PenCom appointed for FGPL, which had been sacked by the courts, did a filing at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
The filing neither had the directors’ approval nor the shareholders’ resolution restructuring the shareholding structure of FGPL.
The shares of its South African partners, Novare, were removed as investors and treated as deposit for shares and Duru’s shares were reduced by 50 per cent from N248 million to under N122 million.
His tormentor-in-chief, Kashim Imam, a shareholder, was also purportedly elected as chairman of FGPL against court orders.
With nowhere else to turn since his traducers were boasting openly that they control the levers of power in Nigeria and knew the particular strings to pull at any point, Duru petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari on April 22, lamenting that his life was in danger.
And in all these, his prayer was simple. “My appeal is that if it is found that there has been an infraction on our part, then let justice be done, but if it is found that we have not done anything wrong, and some other people have misused their powers and influence, let justice also be done.”
No matter how far a lie travels, truth must overtake it. That was what happened on Friday, November 11, a day Duru’s prayer for justice was answered.
That was the day Justice Atinuke Ipaye of the Lagos High Court finally struck out the criminal charges the EFCC preferred against Duru.
And wait for this! Ipaye said in her ruling that the court struck out the case following an application by the EFCC for its withdrawal.
The EFCC, after thoroughly investigating the allegations, finally came to the inevitable conclusion that they were lies and, therefore, applied for the withdrawal pursuant to Section 73 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Law of 2011.
In the application, dated September 7, 2016, Ayokunle Fayanju, counsel to the EFCC, deposed, among other things, “that withdrawing the charges against the defendant/respondent will meet the interest of justice in the case.”
There couldn’t have been a better reason for withdrawing the case because, ab-initio, it was an act of malice, a desperate attempt by a powerful cabal in PenCom to steal a company and, if possible, jail the promoters.
A hostile takeover bit, the equivalent of a “corporate coup”.
However, despite the court victory, questions remain.
Now that the EFCC has realised the truth and done the needful and the court has given a seal of approval, will PenCom climb down from its high horse and hand over FGPL to its rightful owners (the shareholders)?
Will this court ruling end five years of brazen impunity and contempt for the rule of law, justice and equity?
Time will tell.
But unless Nigeria has become an irredeemable banana republic, this absurdity has come to its ignoble, albeit, predictable end. Truth has, once again, trumped PenCom’s insidious lie.