“When the company stopped production, we kept going to work, believing that it would bounce back. Then, under the receivership, we were given one-third of our salaries. After about three month, the salaries stopped,” Gwani said, alleging that a former receiver sold some items of the company.
“The receiver manager began to sell off machines and vehicles. We were expecting to be settled with some of the proceeds from the sales, but that wasn’t done. There was a time we seized the fork lift. It took the intervention of the Divisional Police Officer of Bayo before we allowed it to be taken out. We were told it would be resolved, but nothing came out of it.”
But the Managing Director of the present ownership, Abdu Ringim, told Sunday Trust that “there are stories also that they (the workers) are part of the people who looted the factory, who stole all the pumps, all the pumping machines when they did not receive their salaries. I am not saying all of them. There are bad ones everywhere, there are good ones.”
The message on the website of the company, www.vegfru.com, boasts, thus: “Backed by over 20 years of experience we can tailor a fresh-cut range of products or a value added packed range of products perfectly suited to each customers’ needs.” But for most people here in Nigeria, Vegfru is a brand name that was once ubiquitous in the same vegetable industry. The Vegfru factory in Jauro Garga, a village in Borno state was widely known for its tomato paste, ketchup and mango juice in its hey days.
But not so these days. Its products are no longer “everywhere”. It has an influx of imported tomato paste and both local and imported mango juice to contend with. It has been through vicissitudes of life. “The company was originally controlled by a foreign shareholding, with a minority Nigerian shareholding in the name of Inlaks Limited, India conglomerate in Nigeria.” But the Indians sold their shares to the then British Managing Director, Mr Alstair Watson and his Nigerian partner, Mr Patrick Bassey in 1993. So, the ownership of the company was transferred to CALLON Group (i.e. Calabar and London, the name of the towns of the then new owners)
But the new management ran into trouble. It borrowed money from a consortium of banks under the trusteeship of UBA Trustees Limited. It defaulted in its debt servicing. UBA Trustee took over the company on behalf of the consortium of banks. The company was handed over to Vegetable and Fruit Processing Limited (In receivership) under the late Barrister (and later Senator) Idris Abubakar.
Things went from bad to worse for the once thriving company. Some of the assets of the company disappeared, with accusations and counter-accusations between the former workers and the their management that they knew about the disappearance of the equipment disappeared.
That was the main challenge Savannah Integrated Limited faced when it bought the Vegfru factory at Jauro Garga in the late 1990s. “We couldn’t go back into production,” says Savannah Integrated MD, Abdu Ringim, “because, like I said, the receiver virtually ripped the company off. In fact, there was not a single welding machine in it. All the pumping machines were gone. All the drums were gone. So, you find out that you are virtually starting from the beginning.”
After that, Savannah Integrated had to contend with angry ex-workers demanding for their entitlements. The Indians sold the Vegfru to Calabar and London with assets and liability, according to Aliyu Usman Gwani, a former staff.
“I raised this question at the meeting that was held between the incoming and the outgoing owners,” said Gwani. “What happens to our benefits? Are we going to be paid and start afresh or how? Then, the outgoing MD, Alstair Watson, told me it was sold with the liability. But when they wanted to sell it between the UBA Trustee and Savannah Integrated Farms, we were not there. We didn’t know what happened.”
The ex-workers under the leadership of Gwani took the matter to a Federal High Court in Maiduguri, joining Muhammad Bello Idris (administrator of the estate of late Idris Abubakar Esq., who the Receiver/Manager of Vegfru Limited), Barrister Idris Lawan (Joint administrator of the estate of the late Senator Idris Abubakar, appointed Receiver Manager of Vegfru Limited) and Savannah Integrated Farms Limited.
But he appears to have nobody to bite now. The former workers’ suit was struck out by a Maiduguri High Court. Gwani claimed it was only because they (the plaintiff) were absent at a single sitting of the court.
But the Managing Director of the current owners of the company, Abdu Ringim, believes it was because they had no case. He said, “They went to court in Maiduguri, and the court told them that from what they had seen, from the documents available, Savannah Integrated bought assets, not the liability of the company. So, the court struck out the case because they are joining us for prosecution, but they said we have no case to answer. So, they dismissed the case. If you are absent only once in court, why should your case be struck out?”
However, the workers are not giving up. They plan to take the case to the Industrial Court in Maiduguri. Gwani said: “A lawyer in Maiduguri heard about our plight and offered to take the case to the Industrial court. It is because of the Boko Haram crisis that we have not gone there.”
Ringim is unfazed by that. “We have no objection to them going to court,” he declared. “In fact, as a human being, as a Muslim, I wouldn’t want to find myself in the same position. But as Savannah Integrated Farms, I have no obligation.”
Self-government…
The lack of government presence in a rural area like Jauro Garga is not an issue when even urban areas cry for it. But that was a major headache for Savannah Integrated. The company had to build a police out-post (to replace the burnt one), a school and even partially connect its self to the National Grid.
“But where you are a small government, if you go there I have a filling station. I have a police station: in the factory, at the front. The police station got burnt. I gave the police the police station. The factory is supporting a nursery primary school there,” said Ringim.
The factory has been battling with the common problems of industries in Nigeria: lack of power. Vegfru used to be run on generator before its acquisition by Savannah Integrated. Ringim said Savannah talked Gombe State Government into aiding its efforts to get connected to the National Grid. Fortunately, Borno state power succour also came in.
“After the connection, where is the light?” Ringim asks. President Goodluck Jonathan’s promise to provide power supply before the end of his tenure would have been sufficient for this. But series of such empty promises since the return to civil rule in 1999 make a mere promise insufficient.
This enabling environment for agricultural development, include subsidy for farmers that the free market fanatics wouldn’t want to hear. Companies like this are left at the mercies of heavily subsidized foreign competitors whose products are dumped in the Nigerian market without prohibitive tax that will discourage the indiscriminate importation of foreign products.
Subsidy may be a tall order for a government that is said to be broke. The company has secured an undisclosed amount of money as loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s 200 billion naira Agricultural Credit Scheme. That is what is driving the renovation at the factory that looked more like a construction site than a fruit processing site when Sunday Trust visited the area.
“In terms of recruitment, we gave those who live in the community first priority,” said the Savannah Integrated MD. “Yes, people of the area, people who have worked for Vegfru were given the top priority. That also is to our benefit, but more to their benefits.”
For a North Eastern Nigerian groaning under dearth of industries that can employ the armada of unemployed youths languishing in various forms of violence from political thuggery to insurgency such a recruitment policy should be a welcome succor.
But the two farmers this reporter managed to get for interview are anything but youthful: Sahabi Aliyu, 85, and Muhammadu Tsafe, 70. They both are happy with the company. Not so thirty-year-old Auwal Ibrahim, the head of fruit and vegetable section of Kwadom market, one of the most important vegetable markets in the North East.
“Yes, in the past there used to be transactions between us and the company,” said Auwal. “But these days there is downturn in business. They no longer come in the rainy season when sometimes we have products more than the demand. The company should come and buy the products. But it doesn’t come. Instead it buys in the dry season in the villages. It should come in the rainy season when we have gathered enough in the market and the buyers have had their fill. They (vegfru) are supposed to come and buy the remaining ones because they have the processing know how.”
Abdu Ringim attributed this to the current volume production of the factory. He said: “ I assure him (Auwal) that he will not be able to even supply the tomatoes I need from January. The reason is, the old machines were producing 300 metric tons per day. Even then they are not efficient enough to produce that volume. Now I am installing a 600,000 metric tons machine.”
