Business
The Many corrupt practices of PENCOM DG, Chinelo Anohu exposed + How she allegedly runs PENCOM like a personal property
The director-general of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) Chinelo Anohu-Amaz has been accused of running the commission like a personal property even as many senior staffers want the president to remove her from office.
The National Pension Commission (PENCOM ) was established by the Pension Reform Act (PRA) 2014 and later PRA 2014 to ensure effective administration of the Nigerian pension industry. It has been empowered by the PRA 2014 to superintend on all pension matters in Nigeria including supervision and regulation of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and the old Defined Benefits (DB) Scheme as well as the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD).
The crisis, which has lingered for some time, is now worsening as senior management staff of the organization are no longer comfortable with the leadership of Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, whom they claim has broken every rule in the book since she assumed office as director-general of the organization.
Findings at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja have revealed that besides allegations of conflict of interest and sundry abuses, PENCOM insiders are particularly miffed at the director-general’s continued use of contacts in high places to run roughshod over everyone and every principle of neutral and effective pension administration as a regulator.
They are baffled that this could be going on under the present administration.
It would be recalled that Mrs Anohu assumed headship of the organization in very controversial circumstances, having used her contacts in the Presidency to pressure the National Assembly to reduce the statutory 20 years’ experience for headship of PENCOM to 15 years in order to accommodate her. Industry watchers and lawmakers were scandalized by the open arm-twisting but were handicapped by the powerful pressure her backers brought to bear on the situation.
PENCOM insiders and industry stakeholders insist that her determination to transfer the funds of an active pension fund administrator to another firm, Premium Pension Limited, in which her family has interests, is largely responsible for several unlawful and professionally embarrassing measures the commission has been constrained to take.
The said firm is a family business in which the DG`s mother, Mrs. Virgy Anohu, served two full terms of five years each (10 years), which is the absolute maximum allowed under PENCOM regulations. The DG`s mother was replaced on the Premium Pension board by her elder brother.
Emerging facts indicate that the DG, using a letter she instigated from the sacked managing director of the pension fund company she aims to take over, used the commission to conduct an examination and write a spurious “Draft Target Examination” with which she sought to remove three shareholders of the firm without due process, or fair hearing.
Curiously, the sacked managing director, whose case was ostensibly the basis for the regulator`s intervention, was appointed and remains the chief executive officer of the Premium Pension Limited, a firm in which the DG`s family has substantial interests.
Justice D. U. Okorowo of the Federal High Court in Abuja on August 11, 2011, gave an injunction, which was served on the commission the next day, restraining the DG from taking any action whatsoever based on the spurious draft report. But the DG acted in defiance of the court order. The letter of the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, directing PENCOM to obey the court order was also ignored.
The subsequent judgments of 10 July and 18 July 2012, by Justices Okechukwu Okeke and Okorowo, respectively, asking PENCOM to reverse the unlawful actions it had taken in defiance of a subsisting court order and restraining its agents and collaborators, including the EFCC and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), from taking further actions on the matter, were also ignored by the DG.
Meanwhile, the commission has not done anything to resolve the “issues” on the basis of which it allegedly took over the management of the pension fund administrator. That is why we now have the case of an unprecedented five-year intervention by PENCOM without improving the fortunes of the pension funds management company.
Pension insiders and major stakeholders are raising questions for which the DG is not likely to have any satisfactory answers any time soon. Has the commission managed the said firm the DG has been playing games with profitably since it took it over five years ago? Should firms that was doing well and paying dividends to its shareholders carry on for five full years without paying any dividends, or conducting itself as a responsible social citizen simply because the regulator says it is under an `interim management` it set up in defiance of court orders and several letters from the attorney-general of the federation?
Worse still, investigations have confirmed that the DG actually approached some key shareholders in the firm she has been working to take over, urging them to sell their shares to her preferred buyer without success. Thereafter PENCOM , which has become another name for the DG`s whims, has actually been working hand in gloves with a certain Kashim Imam, who has been her desperate collaborator in the take-over bid.
Investigations further revealed that Imam and the DG have repeatedly tried unsuccessfully and unlawfully, to arm-twist the majority shareholders into a position that would readily serve the empire-building aspirations of the DG.
They are alleged to be jointly and severally using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to harass and seek to embarrass the lawful owners of the company. Like PENCOM , the EFCC has consistently ignored court orders and letters from the AGF on the matter of unlawful harassment of certain persons after courts of competent jurisdiction have entered all judgments in their favour on the matter. It has ignored the AGF`s several letters demanding for the case file on the matter and has run up a monumental record of abuse of court process on this very issue alone.
The question for many people now is whether the Presidency is also working for and with the controversial and less than scrupulous PENCOM DG. As a PENCOM senior management staff said, “We really don’t know what is going on anymore. The DG is bragging that no one can touch her and the EFCC, or at least some people in the EFCC are aiding and abetting some of the very terrible things going on here. She wants to get us all into trouble; meanwhile none of us here is going to share in all the business interests she is amassing here.”
Efforts by our reporter to reach Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amaz for her angle to the report proved futile as letter sent to her office was yet to be responded to as at press time.
Source: -A/Examiner
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
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