• How Midwestern Oil boss dodged a bullet by quitting Oando
• Bosom friend and ex-associate battles hostile takeover
In the mafia-esque oil and gas industry, with its unwritten and understated Omerta, Wale Tinubu, Mofe Boyo and Jite Okoloko are notable 3 wisemen. When they founded Ocean and Oil now Oando Oil Plc., many years ago, the future looked bright. They were successful young men whose storied and sensational lives inspired their peers and made pioneer tycoons feel like they ventured into business at a very wrong time. The trio lived large, blazing a trail that inspired generations of upstarts even as they elicited a series of unanswered questions, by their exploits.
Those who couldn’t understand their meteoric rise contented themselves by making up stories and mustering conjectures about the trio; oil industry pundits and rivals concluded that they were exactly the kind of guys that you give a rope and they doggedly aspire to become cowboys. Then the bubble burst and Jite was edged out for reasons best known to them.
Sadly, partnership died with chilling gasps on the day Jite Okoloko left Ocean and Oil, to forge his sole enterprise. Until his exit, Jite teamed with Wale Tinubu, his bosom friend and business partner, to birth and nurture the oil company. But no sooner did he leave than Wale lifted himself by the jockstraps and consolidated his hold upon the company with the confidence and tenacity of a visionary boardroom strategist. Predictably, he reaped immense fortune from the business while Jite started his own business, Notore Fertilizer.
To Jite’s joy, the business blossomed into a successful enterprise and few years on, he also became the chairman of Midwestern oil. His businesses fluorished and he became a notable name in his circuits of operation.
Today, while Jite ascended the ladder of prosperity and entrepreneurial acclaim, things took a bad turn with his former partners.
All is certainly not well with OANDO. As you read, conflict berths at its doorstep and insurmountable odds crest like a rampart astride the world of the oil and gas company; storms of dissonance and dishonour ravage the peace and haul their joy into troubled waters. The head honcho, Wale, who is widely acknowledged as one of Nigeria’s most adept boardroom czars and serial entrepreneurs has waded into a seething gulf. While he coasts against the current, a mutinous streak pervades his ship as Oando shareholders are in the final stages of booting him out of his exalted office.
The impasse at Oando PLC smouldered for several months before exploding on Wednesday when the capital market regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission, SEC, stepped in to order a forensic audit of the company’s affairs.
The decision followed petitions from two of the company’s shareholders, Dahiru Mangal and Gabriele Volpi, through Mr. Volpi’s company, Ansbury Incorporated, over alleged ‘insider dealings’ and ‘manipulation of the company’s shareholding structure’ in breach of the Investments & Securities Act 2007 and the SEC Code of Corporate Governance for Public Companies.
The commission said the allegations were sufficiently “weighty” to deserve investigation, to preserve all shareholders’ interest.
Consequently, a full technical suspension in trading on Oando Plc shares kicked off on Wednesday till further notice.
Thus Wale, is caught in a frantic struggle to ward off stiff opposition and curb the spread of negative stories about his management of the company.
As he engages in bitter struggle for the soul of Oando, pundits acknowledge the irony of the situation, stressing that had Jite not exited Oando at the time he did, he would also be caught in the violent storms threatening to wreck the ship of the oil giant. Nonetheless, Wale may eventually lose total control of the company which he founded as Ocean and Oil Limited many years ago with Jite and another friend, Mofe Boye.
Speculations abound that Oando Oil Plc has become a victim of its success even as the argument subsists in several circuits that the ongoing crisis in the company was long overdue.
Trouble steered its ugly head in the second quarter of the year when Oando recorded an 8.8 per cent loss in share value, the 12th straight loss in a few months. This followed a selloff pattern of the company’s shares, prompting the company to shed an amazing 63.85 per cent of its market value to the chagrin of its investors and shareholders.
The crisis however, aggravated following a scandalous allegation by a foreign investor, Gabriel Volpi. Volpi, a shareholder of Intels Nigeria Limited, operator of the oil and gas logistics terminals in Onne, Rivers State and Warri, Delta State, claimed his company should be running Oando because Wale had sold him majority shares years ago.
He accused Wale of mismanagement, cooked books and huge debts and even took a swipe at the MD/CEO’s flashy lifestyle of luxury yachts and exotic holidays overseas.
Volpi claimed that his company, Ansbury, invested about $700 million in Ocean and Oil Development Partners Limited (OODP BVI), a special purpose vehicle registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2012, by acquiring a 61.9 per cent stake in the firm, while a company owned by Wale Tinubu, Withmore Limited, held 38.10 per cent of the stake in OODP BVI.
He also claimed that he lent $80 million to Withmore to enable Wale acquire the 38.10 per cent stake in OODP BVI.
Wale had allegedly approached Volpi to invest in the British Virgin Islands-registered firm when Oando Plc was seeking to acquire ConocoPhillips’ upstream oil and gas assets in Nigeria for $1.5 billion, a deal eventually consummated in 2014.
According to Volpi, OODP BVI (where he holds majority stake) in turn, owns 99.99 per cent of the shares of Ocean and Oil Development Partners Nigeria Limited (OODP Nigeria), which holds 55.96 per cent of the shares in Oando Plc, the oil and gas company listed on the Nigerian and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges.
Volpi’s Ansbury is not only seeking to recuperate its money, but also plans to remove the Group CEO, and sack the entire board and management as well as reject any proposal seeking approval for the remuneration of the CEO and other directors of Oando.
Thus its recent petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Lagos and Abuja drawing the attention of the regulator to the alleged state of affairs in Oando while seeking its intervention.
However, Jite would be thanking God that he left the company at a good time when ovation is loudest.
