Over 17,000 applications for trademarks and patents were left unattended
to since 2009 in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment in spite
of payments made for the processing of such documents by the applicants,
Pointblanknews.com investigation has revealed.
The two ministers in the ministry, Okechukwu Enilama and Aisha Abubakar,
appear helpless in tackling the situation despite several presentations of
the matter at various management meetings held in the ministry.
Several petitions are also before the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, by
applicants based in Europe and America, who were scammed by some
unscrupulous officials of the Department of Commercial Law of the
ministry.
Osinbajo supervises the ministry as coordinator of federal government’s
economic and investment policies.
The development is affecting Nigeria’s position in World Bank’s Ease of
Doing Business Ranking where Nigeria is ranked 169 out of 189 countries.
The culprit in the scam is the Ministry’s Department of Commercial Law
headed by Barrister Amugi Williams Keftin, whose “boys” (staff) are neck
deep in scamming unsuspecting Nigerians and have made it a huge business
venture. Keftin’s predecessors were also involved in the scam .
Pointblanknews.com has learned that applicants mostly businessmen are
made to part with between N500,000.00 to N1,000.000.00 after which
officials of the ministry adopt a stonewalling approach. A Nigerian
businessman based in Germany recently paid N1 million to officials of the
department, who later went below the radar prompting him to petition the
ministry and the Vice President. His petition is presently receiving
attention.
“This scam has been going on since 2009. About 17,000 applications have
not been attended to but most of the applicants have paid for them. Some
who have paid and gone with some preliminary approvals go away thinking
they have their trademarks and patents intact but they don’t.
“Every new director that comes to the department inherits that scam and
continues from where his or her predecessor stopped. Since 2009, over N1
billion have been taken off applicants without any complete job done. The
website, www.iponnigeria.com is also a website designed to fleece
unsuspecting Nigerians and foreigners alike”, a reliable source told
Pointblanknews.com.
Further investigations showed that when confronted by the management,
Barrister Keftin, who is in the habit of signing applications at a snail
pace, claimed that he had signed 2000 applications out of the pending
17,000 but the applications remained in his custody.
He further claimed that he had shortage of staff prompting the Ministry of
Justice to deploy 50 lawyers to the ministry.
“The unfortunate thing”, another source said “is that there is no
accommodation for the lawyers so they loiter around and get mixed up in
the fraudulent scheme”.
The two ministers in the ministry appear unable to tackle the challenge in
spite of having received reports and briefings on the matter.
“The are not up to the task on this issue. It is either they are helpless
or they lack the knowledge of how the scheme affects business because no
single action has been taken against the culprits who are staff of the
ministry and their outside collaborators”, a concerned stakeholder said.
Efforts made to reach media managers of the ministry was unsuccessful as
they were said to be away for a programme in Lagos.