Re: AMCON Vs Arik case: Lest we forget the facts of the matter, By Godwin Aideloje

One would have thought that Mr Gbenga Alade, the new MD of AMCON, would use the findings offered by the EFCC investigations of Mr Kuru and others to make corrections, improvement, and allow the law to be the arbiter in disputes. It is most unfortunate that AMCON, a Federal Government agency entrusted with unprecedented special powers by our laws and offered a new lease of life with a new leadership, is playing the role of judge, jury, executioner and victim through all its dramas in the media.

Arik Air shareholders are compelled by the need to clarify and correct false and misleading statements attributed to AMCON through its Head of Corporate Communications, Mr Jude Nwabuzor, which was published in Premium Times of 20 December and some social media handles. We dare say that this is yet another salvo in the series of calculated attempts to cover up the truth about AMCON forceful take-over, mismanagement and destruction of Arik Air. However, since most of the issues recklessly misrepresented by Mr Nwauzor are before the court, we, out of our respect for the law courts, shall only limit ourselves to restating the facts.

It is unfortunate that AMCON, a public institution, under the pretext of replying an opinion expressed in a newspaper by an independent commentator, resorted to launching a malicious tirade against the Shareholders of Arik Air and perhaps other government agencies, especially the EFCC. Instead of addressing the issues raised by the commentator.

First, we must start by thanking AMCON for finally admitting that the take-over of Arik Air was as a result of a “directive” from the Buhari-led Federal Government. This “directive” however side-stepped the statutory procedure and due process that guide the take-over of companies in Nigeria. Thus, the forceful take-over of Arik was a political ambush followed by an after-thought of an economic justification of insolvency, which was badly portrayed as an “economic rescue act”.

1. On the issue of petition to EFFC: We were forced to file a petition to the EFCC through the chambers of Femi Falana & Co only after AMCON refused to obey any of the consequential orders of the Federal High Court’s judgement in suit number FHC/L/CS/1175/2021 of 31 March, 2023, and instead resorted to disobeying and disparaging the Court. It should also be stated that Arik shareholders were investigated by the EFCC at the instance of AMCON from 2021, until relieved from invitations on the unsubstantiated allegations by AMCON. This was during the tenure of Mr Rasheed Bawa during the Buhari administration. Mr Bawa also authorised the investigation of the Arik shareholders’ petition, even in the face of reported intense pressure by the former Managing Director of AMCON, Mr Ahmed Kuru, to scuttle investigations of the affairs of AMCON in the Arik Air receivership. The investigation progressed even after the change of guards at the EFCC and its findings are finally seeing the light of day only because Mr Bawa, the former chairman, and the new EFCC chairman Mr Olu Olukayode, insisted that nobody is above the law.

For the records, the same EFCC, at the instance of AMCON, arrested and detained Sir JIA Arumemi-Ikhide on 8 February 2017, the eve of the take-over of Arik Air. Sir Arumemi Ikhide was investigated by EFFC and released without indictment. Yet, he neither cast an aspersion against the EFCC nor castigated AMCON for the trauma he suffered from the unjustified detention.

It is unfortunate that AMCON is falsely alleging that Arik shareholders’ petition and the resultant prosecution by the EFCC is a collusion to frame its former MD, Mr Ahmed Kuru; Mr Kamilu Alaba Omokide (former receiver manager, Arik); Captain Roy Ilegbodu (CEO, Arik in Receivership); Super Bravo Limited, and Union Bank Plc.

On our part, we respect the mandates of government agencies and wait for the courts to adjudicate without resorting to sub-judicial commentaries.

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Peradventure, the AMCON protagonists should be reminded that Mr Femi Falana’s petition on our behalf is not the only one calling Mr Ahmed Kuru’s regime at AMCON to account. Could other petitions through other lawyers to the EFCC on keystone Bank, in which Mr Kuru and others have been charged to court, also be a collusion and an attempt to embarrass AMCON and its officers?

One would have thought that Mr Gbenga Alade, the new MD of AMCON, would use the findings offered by the EFCC investigations of Mr Kuru and others to make corrections, improvement, and allow the law to be the arbiter in disputes. It is most unfortunate that AMCON, a Federal Government agency entrusted with unprecedented special powers by our laws and offered a new lease of life with a new leadership, is playing the role of judge, jury, executioner and victim through all its dramas in the media.

The descent to name-calling when the law or court judgements fail to suit AMCON’s false narratives is sad. We wish to remind AMCON that to execute the Arik receivership, it used the same EFCC, police and the courts.

Mr Alade-led AMCON should be courageous enough to own up to the fact that his predecessor misadvised the Federal Government, instead of recycling the false narrative that continue to project the country as a space not governed by values, law, order and due process. Afterall, no human is beyond error!

In addition, he should be reminded that the case in court is between the Federal Republic of Nigeria (his employers) and former employees of AMCON and others, yet Mr Alade’s utterances as reported in the media indicate he is not in agreement with the actions of his present employers, with respect to the former MD and other being charged to court.

2. On Federal Government’s Intervention or AMCON’s Forced Takeover: We hereby wish to restate the position in our response to the statement made in 2023 by Mr Kuru that the Acting President at the time (Professor Yemi Osinbajo) directed AMCON to take over Arik. We consider this claim as untenable that a learned man of law would direct AMCON to take over a private business when there are extant laws in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria governing receiverships and processes of putting companies into administration! Unless he was wrongly advised or misinformed by Mr Kuru.

It may be unknown to the public and therefore bears repeating that several companies, just like Arik, have been victims of Mr Kuru’s novel “creation” of receiverships for companies allegedly of interest to him and his collaborators.

3. President Bola Tinubu’s Angle: AMCON’s desperate attempt at invoking the name of former President Muhammadu Buhari into this matter is tantamount to disparaging the office of the President and dragging this exalted office into disrepute. We are confident that President Tinubu will not condone any act of impunity for the arbitrary take-over of a private business by a stroke of the pen. Clearly this implies that AMCON’s justification of a business take-over by executive fiat runs at cross purposes with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s private sector leadership agenda. This is aptly captured in his own words as follows: “There is no driver of the economy that is bigger than the private sector. If the private sector is not flourishing, there is no growth, no prosperity, no employment or development. No matter how flowery the speeches are, not even a mushroom will grow”.

4. AMCON’s Claims of Indebtedness by Arik: We wish to state that we will not discuss the alleged indebtedness of Arik Air on the pages of the newspapers, as this is one of the main issues before the courts. Unlike AMCON which disobeys the courts and discusses all matters pending before the courts in the media and press conference. Suffice it to state that the new MD of AMCON recently called on the courts to rescue it on its own terms, whereas the corporation brazenly refused to obey ALL consequential orders of the judgement of the Federal High Court (without stay of execution) on the Arik Air receivership.

5. State of Arik Fleet by Unaccountable Receivership: Mr Alade was invited and visited the Arik Air Hangars at the request of the shareholders on 28 August, so he could see for himself, first-hand, the wanton destruction of 14 new generation aircraft and other Arik assets by AMCON and its agents. We are therefore shocked to read in the publication under reference, offer of superlative praises for the same agents and officers who superintended over the wanton decimation/cannibalisation of the airline’s fleet.

6. Other Issues: The matters of alleged loans, lease defaults, maintenance reserves, fake letters and KPMG audits have been uploaded to the media by AMCON in its traditional methods to set false narratives and promote conclusions not founded on truth and equity, including inciting public disaffection for the promoters of Arik and tacitly overreaching the courts. However, since these are key issues to be adjudicated by the courts, we have been advised by our lawyers to refrain from responding on the pages of newspapers.

7. Obstruction of Aircraft Sales etc: We are not aware of any plans to sell any aircraft by AMCON. But we state categorically that as shareholders of Arik, we exercised our constitutionally guaranteed rights for protection of our investments by seeking the court’s protection for the three units of Boeing 737-NG aircraft that were fraudulent transferred to Super Bravo and for the reversal of Arik funds illegally used for the registration/processing of AOC for NG Eagle by AMCON. The courts ruled in our favour, and ordered the reversal, the transfer and indicted the Receiver Manager for breach of fiduciary duties to Arik. The court also ordered AMCON to file audited accounts of its receivership from 2017 to date (December 2022) to the Corporate Affairs Commission, which AMCON and its Receiver Managers have failed to do.

8. AMCON’s Leadership for Arik: The claims of stabilisation of Arik Air by AMCON is an insult to the travelling public. The downturn and dwindled fortunes of the airline is visibly displayed for the world to see, both in the airline operations under receivership and at the Arik Hangar where 14 cannibalised and destroyed aircraft are on display. AMCON’s solely appointed Receiver Manager and CEO’s mismanagement is a testament to this fact.

Arik under shareholders management operated an average of 120 flights daily, with a route network traversing the whole of Nigeria, all west and central Africa’s major airports, including Angola and Johannesburg. As well as London and New York, with about 22 aircraft. But today, under AMCON, it only operates about 25 flights daily with three aircraft out of the 19 that AMCON inherited from the shareholders at take-over. Indeed, what a display of expertise by AMCON’s standard!

That the AMCON’s “revered” aviation experts could not convert the much-sought-after Arik London Heathrow and JFK landing slots worth over US$70 million to quick cash when the receivership management discontinued flights to those destinations, speaks to their incompetency. They lost those hard earned valuable slots to inexperience and selfishness! If AMCON’s measure of expertise should be a benchmark in Nigeria, then the future in aviation is bleak for the country.

It is surprising that rather than relieve the officers charged to court by Federal Government from their duties pending the determination of the cases in Court, the AMCON MD is protecting and keeping them in their duty post in disregard of government code of conduct. We recall that when allegations of impropriety were made against serving minister in this administration, the president took appropriate actions.

Mr Oluseye Opasanya (SAN), Kamilu Alaba Omokide FCA and Captain Roy Ilegbodu inherited a well maintained fleet of 19 new generation aircraft with large inventory of over US$200 million worth of spare parts and spare engines. It should be noted that most of the aircraft have been fully paid for by the shareholders, but AMCON refused to meet the ongoing obligations for a few aircraft whose obligations will crystallise in 2025, when they took over in 2017. Yet they cannot manage the airline.

Clearly the receivership manager NEVER had any positive plan for the airline. Its claim of intervention, rescue and promise to turn around the airline is a hoax and a woeful failure.

It appears that AMCON is more fixated on covering the malfeasance it created in Arik by angrily attacking Arik shareholders. They should however remember other cases making headlines, such as Keystone Bank, that AMCON’s former executives must answer to.

As stated earlier, we have answers to all the issues raised by AMCON in the refrenced publications. We have made them known in previous publications. However, since some of the matters are now before the court, we shall refrain from public commentaries as advised by our lawyers.

We, the shareholders of Arik, are willing and ready for an open dialogue and discussions with AMCON in the presence of the relevant authorities such as Police, EFCC, the CBN, the Ministries of Finance, Justice, and Aviation and Aerospace.

We come to equity with clean hands and ask that AMCON does the same.

Godwin Aideloje writes on behalf of Arik Shareholders.