Guest Column

   

NigerianNews



Oluwasegun Ajayi

Nigeria

When someone buys a company, he buys both its assets and liabilities. Dr. Mike Adenuga embraced the assets with glee while at the same time disowning the company’s liabilities. He called the collective agreement he met on ground trash. This was a mistake. It created a credibility problem for him. None of the staff trusts him from then onwards. He sacked all the staff he met on ground. He threw them a ‘carrot’ which he euphemistically called Voluntary Severance Package. He did not tell them a bigger stick is waiting for all who ignored his carrot.  Some would argue that he paid us off handsomely. What good is that to a man who has twelve more years to spend in a company where he has no plan in place for retirement yet? A survey conducted among the ‘severed’ staff revealed one tale of woe or another. Many of us are now wallowing in abject poverty.


Suffering in the midst of plenty: The dilemma of Conoil pensioners.
by  Oluwasegun Ajayi

Colton once said that a man who will not permit his wealth to do any good to others while he is living, prevents it from doing good to himself when he is dead. Not everyone can be rich but everybody should be able to afford what he or she needs. A man is rich not because he is better than his neighbour but because God in his infinite mercy granted him the grace to be rich. Many people will disagree with Beecher that, no man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger.  He says the heart makes a man rich.  He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has. That is not true.  Money is important to the sustenance of life and good living. For a rich man to deny others the means to living a fulfilling life simply because he is in position to do so is sheer wickedness.  

When Michael Adenuga Jr. took over the majority share of National oil now known as Conoil, the staff went into wild celebration. The company was neck deep in financial mess created by reckless spending of the then management. They believed the man is the messiah that will clear the mess and usher in a new dawn. How wrong they were! He actually did, but to the exclusion of the old staff. No sooner, he came than he started showing that the confidence the staff reposed in him was misplaced. Poor souls! The man should be grateful that he bought the company for the price of a peanut because of the greediness of the then management. They deliberately undervalued the assets of the company during the due-diligence to facilitate their taking over of the company on their own term. They won the first bidding but because the victory was built on dishonesty and fraud, their celebration did not last long. 

When someone buys a company, he buys both its assets and liabilities. Dr. Mike Adenuga embraced the assets with glee while at the same time disowning the company’s liabilities. He called the collective agreement he met on ground trash. This was a mistake. It created a credibility problem for him. None of the staff trusts him from then onwards. He sacked all the staff he met on ground. He threw them a ‘carrot’ which he euphemistically called Voluntary Severance Package. He did not tell them a bigger stick is waiting for all who ignored his carrot.  Some would argue that he paid us off handsomely. What good is that to a man who has twelve more years to spend in a company where he has no plan in place for retirement yet? A survey conducted among the ‘severed’ staff revealed one tale of woe or another. Many of us are now wallowing in abject poverty.

This brings me to the case of the retired staff which is the purpose of this write-up. I am one of them but in my own case, I was smart enough to go back to the University for another Degree. The Pensioner’s Association was on the verge of agreeing to a negotiated pension increase with the management before Dr. Adenuga took over. They have been negotiating with Dr. Mike Adenuga to implement the same Federal Government increases since he bought into the company.  The greatest defect of the privatisation policy of the last administration is not taking the fate of the privatised company‘s staff and the pensioners into consideration when selling off the companies.

A friend of mine who retired from one of the federal government parastatals retired on a pension of =N=2,500 per month in1989. His pension is now =N=20,500 per month because of the various Federal government increases which Mike Adenuga refused to implement in Conoil.  Some pensioners still receive =N=4,000 in this age of double digit inflation as monthly pension in Conoil. This is wickedness in its highest form. What does Dr. Mike Adenuga expect a man who comes from Port Harcourt every month to collect his pension in Lagos do with such a ridiculous amount? That amount is not enough to feed the Doctor’s dog for a day if he has one.

Dr. Mike Adenuga should please as a mater of urgency do something about the increase before we all die of hunger. The man they called the business guru once muted the idea of paying off all the pensioners. We all bought the idea. It died a natural death because he wanted to pay us off on the present ridiculous pension without first increasing it to be at par with what obtains in other oil companies who have implemented the Federal government increases. Even if he pays for 50 years, at the rate of =N=4,000 per month, that is nothing.

Many of us prefer the option of paying off because we believe sooner than later the pension fund will run out of fund. It is a known fact that Dr. Adenuga has not contributed a kobo to the pension fund since he took over. The pension fund presently has enough funds to pay off all the pensioners after implementing all federal government increases that Conoil refused to implement. This will enable Dr. Adenuga sever the remaining link with the old National oil and move on to running his company as he deem fit. After all, the man does not believe in pension scheme for his staff. He sees the money he pays us monthly as a waste.  He believes the salary a man earns while working is enough for him without the indulgence of monthly pension when he is no more adding value to the company. Mike Adenuga once asked, “doesn’t he earn salary when he was alive?” when he was presented the final entitlement cheque belonging to a deceased staff for signature.

Hit Counter