Odu’a Investment Company Limited Board Chairman Chief Segun Ojo has said the company’s activities are guided by corporate governance.
The firm’s immediate past chairman of the board, Chief Isaac Akintade, in an advertorial, alleged that the company was being run contrary to corporate governance.
In a letter to the six owner states governments, Ojo said the allegations by Akintade against the Group Managing Director of the company, Mr. Adewale Raji, were not true.
Ojo expressed worry that the former chairman, who served the company for seven years, four as Director and the three remaining three years as Chairman, could mislead the public with non-existent information.
He noted that Akintade’s grouse about the GMD started moment he (Akintade) was withdrawn as the Chairman of Odu’a Board of Directors following a March 22, 2017 letter directing his withdrawal by the Ondo State government.
Ojo said: “The standard practice and procedure for appointment and withdrawal of Directors in ODU’A is for the owner states to nominate or notify of the withdrawal of a Director through a letter to Odu’a after which Odu’a through the Group Managing Director would issue a letter of appointment or withdrawal to the director.”
Ojo said since Akintade was formally notified of his withdrawal, it would be illegal for him to attend and preside as the board’s Chairman.
On the allegation of approval for payment of N65m to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), Segun Ojo explained that the process began with a plan to admit Lagos State into ODU’A Group and directed the Board to engage the services of any of the top five consulting firms in Nigeria to work out the details of the process of admission of the state.
He said Akintade’s claim that the management sought for the payment of N65m to PwC for a job that had neither been discussed nor approved by the management committee, board committee and the whole board was spurious.
Ojo added that consultants with specialised skills, such as KPMG, PwC and other were engaged to perform some specialized services for the company contrary to suggestions by Akintade that individual consultants who he could influence should be engaged.
The Board chairman, however, said under Akintade as the chairman, the Group witnessed major challenges and loss. He listed such factories that were shut down as Cocoa Industries Limited (2010), Nigeria Wire and Cables, Ibadan and Epe Plywood (2012), Askar Paints and Ibadan (2013), among others.
On the N20b forecast turnover in five years, Ojo said the initial efforts to recruit strategic talent to jump-start the actualisation of the plan in 2015 were frustrated by Akintade and others.
The Board dismissed the allegation that Raji used convoys with siren.
