To your tent, O tribesman!

Last week witnessed a double whammy — the hijab controversy at the Call to Bar ceremony and the arrest of Innocent Chukwuma of Innoson Motors by operatives of the EFCC. In both cases the reaction of partisans was totally predictable as logic and morality were sent on compulsory vacation.  

Essayist Pius Adesanmi predicts that we shall soon get over those issues and latch on to new distractions — and we have them aplenty: “Having done Christianity versus Islam over hijab before transitioning to Yoruba versus Igbo over Innocent Chukwuma this week, chances are we will be back to APC versus PDP by Christmas. Is this not progress?”

 When I received emails and text messages imploring me to close my GT Bank accounts because Igbos were withdrawing their funds from the bank and therefore, according to the ‘texters’, the bank would soon collapse, I called a gentleman who should be in the know and he told me that it was all the handiwork of Chukwuma’s supporters. 

Suddenly a bank which had rolled out N2.4 billion in 2009 to support a businessman of Igbo extraction was being branded a Yoruba bank in 2017. Apparently the bank wasn’t an ethnic bank when it rolled out the facility (to part finance working capital requirements, import new motorcycles and motorcycle spare parts, agricultural spare parts and plastic manufacturing equipment), but became one when it attempted to enforce debt recovery.

I have read the press releases issued by Chukwuma and his company, Innosons. I will never be party to denying anyone his human rights. I have my own grudges against some banks for outright cheating/stealing. I am taking up some of the more vexing cases with the CBN as stipulated in the law. However, I have never accused any of the banks of dealing me a rough hand just because of my ethnicity. 

Some people have wondered what EFCC’s business was in the Innoson matter. Well, a financial crime was allegedly involved in the saga. Chukwuma had allegedly requested GT Bank to release shipping documents of goods imported with the bank’s funding without payment of the agreed 25% equity. The bank declined. In June 2011 the bank discovered that the Imported goods had been fraudulently procured by Innoson through the forging of the bank’s endorsement on the bills of lading to the Shipping Line. Innoson had fraudulently cleared the Imported goods which were in the name of GT Bank! 

 There are several cases instituted in the courts on both sides. One of the issues to be determined is the allegation that the signatures of 4 (four) staff of GT Bank — Taofeek Olalere, Dan Attah, Bunmi Adeyemi and Amazu Amalachukwu — as well as the Bank’s stamp, were forged on all the shipping documents used by Innoson to fraudulently clear the goods at the port.

According to Premium Times investigation, as at December 31, 2011, a debit balance of N1,654,481,895.04 stood against Innoson. That sum was reportedly negotiated down to N1,095,107,822.95 as full and final payment of the customer’s indebtedness after the removal of default charges in the spirit of reconciliation. He defaulted and filed a suit against GT Bank alleging unlawful excess charges on his account. In a classic case of the hunted becoming the hunter, he has actually won a couple of cases which the bank has appealed at each turn. 

I am told that Chukwuma had been summoned by EFCC before. It was his refusal to honour subsequent invitations that made the anti-graft agency descend on him. As Sam Adaji Ededhor noted in the social media, “ We should not be blackmailed into believing that an industrialist is above the law”. This case will make banks redesign their lending procedure and customer profiling. From owing GT Bank N2.4 billion and repaying part of the debt to claiming N8 billion in judgement debt today, Innoson’s real money spinner might not be auto manufacturing but litigation!

I can’t find any ethnic colouring in the relationship between Chukwuma and GT Bank. The attempt by ethnic warlords and those who always want to profit from imaginary inter-tribal spats to villagise the whole issue is quite ridiculous. Did Chukwuma call on Igbos and his senators to help him thank GTBank when he secured the loan eight years ago? How come his camp now seems to prefer the village square sabre-rattling, “To your tent, O tribesman”, meant to de-market his erstwhile benefactor even as Chukwuma himself still remains a customer of GT Bank? 

Pius Odesanmi in his piece, “Nigerian Banks, Billionaires and Your Sorry Ordinary Ass”, puts the point very succinctly, “When we speak about a particular class we call the Nigerian elite, many have a reductionist conceptualisation of the matter. You think in terms of individuals, of those one percenters in politics, social circles, and business.It is important that you broaden your understanding of the elite… In other words, the politicians, the state and her instruments of violence (the Army, the police, EFCC, etc), the banks and other instruments of financial accumulation and oppression, are all part of a one percentile elite organism of exploitation and oppression”.

 Eventually it is the judiciary (up to the Supreme Court) that will have the final say on this matter. But before then, I predict that the horde of agoraphobic tribesmen at the barricades who want to latch on to this very private matter to further rend relations between one part of the country and the other, will fail.