Date Published: 01/18/11

Multi-million Naira fraud rocks THISDAY Newspaper
…Editor sacked, others may face prosecution

Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, Chairman, ThisDay Newspapers	Mr. Eniola Bello, Group Executive Director, ThisDay	Mr. Simon Kolawole, Editor, ThisDay	Mr. Ayodele Aminu, Sacked Group Business Editor

Group Executive Director of THISDAY newspaper, Mr. Eniola Bello, as well as its Editor, Mr. Simon Kolawole are currently in a battle of their lives to save their necks from possible arrest and prosecution for a multi-million naira in-house fraud which led to the sack, last Friday, of the paper’s Group Business Editor, Mr. Ayodele Aminu.

Messrs Bello and Kolawole, who are currently in the United Kingdom on official assignment, have reportedly begun lobbying top officials in The Presidency to convince their chairman, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, that they are not part of Mr. Aminu’s syndicate.

Trouble began for the trio of Bello, Kolawole and Aminu when certain “friends” of President Goodluck Jonathan approached THISDAY through Aminu to run a “wrap around” colour advertorial for the President. Aminu reportedly charged N15 million for each of the two slots the president’s friends were interested in running, bringing the total sum to N30 million.

Offered a top management staff of the paper, “fully aware that commissions are not drawn from ‘wrap around’ adverts, Aminu routed the advert through his agency, and created the impression that the clients were demanding a 20 percent commission.

“When some Advert Staff raised eyebrows, Aminu, with the assistance of Eni-B (Eniola Bello) and Simon (Kolawole) soft-soaped chairman into giving the nod for payment for the advert be made less 20 percent. Nduka even placed a call to somebody in Aminu’s agency without knowing it was a staff of one of his editor’s front agencies,” he said.

According to the source, “the commissions for the two-day adverts came to N6 million, which was yielded Aminu’s agency, instead of the clients as claimed by Aminu,” adding, “we are still trying to crack the nut if Eni-B and Kolawole shared of the N6 million.”

Another advert staff told Pointblanknews.com that the bubble had burst on Aminu’s deal when on arriving in Abuja for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) presidential convention, last Thursday, Mr. Obaigbena was accosted by the authors of the wrap around adverts “who thanked chairman profusely for their advert which they claimed gained more mileage than the N30 million they paid.”

He offered that a shell-shocked Obaigbena had shortly after the convention launched investigations into the whereabouts of the N6 million Aminu, Bello and Kolawole claimed was paid to the clients as commission.

“In no time, it emerged that Aminu had actually paid himself the N6 million. Checks at the Corporate Affairs Commission confirmed that the agency belonged to Aminu, and further investigations revealed that he had used the agency in the past to glean commissions from dozens of wraps around by several banks and blue chip companies in the recent past. The commissions are believed to be not less than N120 million,” the official claimed.

He added that the chairman is particularly pained that “his editors staged him to speak with a scam client who turned out to be an employee of his editor.”

The paper’s Abuja business correspondent and graduate of mathematics, Mr. Kunle Aderinokun has since been appointed Aminu’s replacement, with investigations continuing over how the former Group Business Editor fleeced THISDAY of tens of millions of Naira under the supposed eagle watch of the stuttering Managing Director.

No less comfortable is Kolawole, who is said to wear the mien of a non-compromising editor, and had in his last column “Simon Kolawole Live!” gleefully announced the introduction of THISDAY’s new website.

Mr. Obaigbena is said to be under pressure to sack the duo of Eni-B and Kolawole for complicity in the fraud which has robbed his publishing house of tens of millions of Naira in revenue, even when staffers reportedly go months-on-end without salaries. Kolawole’s four-year tenure as editor is expected to end later in the year.

Recall that Kolawole and Bello were reportedly behind the late December suspension and humiliation of THISDAY’s Abuja deputy editor, Ms. Constance Ikokwu, as exclusively reported by Pointblanknews.com.

On the very day Pointblanknews.com broke the story, THISDAY reportedly offset the four-month salary arrears it owed its workers, and in early January 2011, recalled its Divisional director in Abuja, Mr. Benjie Iheyen, and his colleague in charge of its Abuja printing press, Alhaji Nuhu Musa, a former commissioner in Jigawa State. Prior to the story by Pointblanknews.com, both men had been on suspension for over four months.

On her part, Ms. Ikokwu hasn’t been recalled, fuelling speculations that she may be serving out a punishment for reportedly leaking the story of her Christmas humiliation and assault by THISDAY security men to Pointblanknews.com.