By: SUNDAY ADEBAYO
Dr. Ambrose Bryant Orjiako, the billionaire owner of a leading oil and gas company in Nigeria is a renowned businessman. But what many people didn’t know was that he is also the leading debtor in the country. His huge debts were among those of those that ultimately sank the diamond bank ship. A staggering $200 million debt is owed the now-defunct Diamond Bank by just one of his companies. It is a scandal that is brewing in business circles. How did this happen? Diamond Bank whose assets and liabilities were taken over by Access Bank went down to the shock of many who had followed its rise and successes over the years and had come to see it as the promise. They wondered what had happened.?
Now the circumstances surrounding its fall are becoming clearer. The Access bank management is not about to play the old game of hiding and seek with chronic debtors who are unwilling to pay. They are taking a very frontal and aggressive approach to recovering monies owed the bank and all they are asking “pay us our money”.
Orjiako, the founder and Chairman of Seplat Petroleum, President of Shebah Exploration and Production Company, and majority stakeholder of Cardinal Drilling Services Ltd. His Sheba E&P and Cardinal Drilling Services Ltd are among major debtors that dragged Diamond Bank to its demise. It is to their shame that one of the most successful Banks owned by a highly successful South-easterner was dragged down businessmen from that region.
In December last year, Access bank secured a Mareva injunction against Orjiako, Seplat, and his other companies owing to a huge debt of $135million, due to accrued interest on dollar value.
However, in the same December 2020, the access bank won the Mareva injunction for Orjiakor’s failure to pay all these years which has summed up to $200million dollars. Orjiako’s business model it appears is to use his subsidiary companies to borrow and then use the borrowed money to acquire assets for Splat’s benefit in order to insulate Seplat from liabilities.…
This bad debt is one of what eventually destroyed diamond banks and the regulator should not allow this to repeat itself if we don’t want these businessmen to finally ruin the financial sector of the country.
Though, orjiakor is saying Seplat is not owing Access Bank the said huge debt, he did not dispute the fact that one of his company is owing to the huge debt in question. He is also not disputing that those loans were taken for the benefit of Seplat. As a gentleman people perceive him to be shouldn’t rise to the challenge and pay up to avoid dragging his name in the mud as he becomes a familiar face in courtrooms over failure to pay loans he or his companies collected?
Meanwhile, in August 2019, a Federal High Court in Abuja had also granted the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON an application to take over Orjiako’s assets. The Court also ordered the takeover of his shares in SEPLAT Petroleum Development Company, Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited, and Allene Limited.
The assets affected by the Mareva injunction included; 25, Lugard Avenue, Ikoyi, Lagos, 6, Agodogba Avenue, Parkview, Ikoyi, Lagos and the one at 11, Oba Adeyinka Oyekan Street, Ikoyi, Lagos, an oil vessel, MT Trinity Spirit used as a Floating, Production, Storage, and Offloading(FPSO) facility in Ukpokiti Oil Field belonging to Shebah Exploration and Production Company.
Also affected were all the movable and immovable assets of Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited in and outside Nigeria, including the oil production facilities and other assets belonging to Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited, located in and around Ukpkiti Oil Field.
The order was accompanied by letters to the Managing Directors of 29 commercial and merchant banks in the country where Ambrose Orjiako and his allies have accounts.
While he has successfully brokered a deal with AMCON.Orjiako’s companies are reluctant to pay back the banks many other financial institutions, they are indebted to. Access bank is currently on its trail to make sure every penny is recovered. And right now, the public is in no mood to tolerate bad debtors whose extravagant lifestyles have always been a source of worry to them. Let everyone who has borrowed pay his or her debt, period. After all the monies borrowed from the banks are depositors’ monies.