Okitipupa Oil Palm Plc has debunked the fraud allegations leveled against Taiwo Adewole, its managing director and CEO, describing it as misleading and capable of instigating violence that may disrupt the smooth operations of the company.
The Oil Palm Company noted that it is confident and takes pride in the achievements of the company under the present board of directors with Taiwo Adewole leading the executive management team.
It added that the company’s financial and operational performance has always been subjected to proper and responsible scrutiny since the inception of the board that Adewole chairs.
“The board of directors of Okitipupa Oil Palm (OOP Plc) has condemned in very strong terms the various false information trending in some social media regarding the operations of the company and the person of our Managing Director, Taiwo Adewole.
“We have gone through the entire piece of information shared by one Olujimi Adekanle and a host of others and concluded that they are not only far from the truth, we consider these as malicious and intended to mislead the public and government of Ondo State to provoke unnecessary and avoidable violence aimed at disrupting the smooth operations of the company,” the company said in a statement.
It stated further that the company uses manuals developed by a globally renowned consultancy firm to guide its processes and operations, as well as to safeguard the assets of the company such that its assets and resources can not be disbursed by any individual or group of persons outside the parameters set out by the board.
All revenue of the company is, according to Akinboye Oyewumi, chairman, board of directors, paid directly to the bank and is captured fully within the banking procedures of the company.
“It is important to state that the current board of directors, with Adewole as the head of executive management, introduced a cashless policy from its inception in April 2018. This cashless policy ensures that cash is not handled in any form in the company,” said Oyewumi.
The board noted that dividends have been paid to shareholders twice under the current management and for the first time since 1994 when the company became a Public Limited Company.
“It is also important to state that the company’s annual turnover increased from a mere N260 million in 2017 to about N2 billion at the end of 2023, and profitability moved from a profit of N38.6 million in 2017 to almost N1 billion in 2023.”
In the statement, the company also decried “the dirty ethnic politics” being introduced into its affairs as a company, “where some frustrated kingpins of
illegal harvesters were leading the illegal call for the removal of Adewole on the illogical claim that he is not of Ikale extraction and making mischievous allegations of fraud.
“On the call for the Ondo state governor to change the leadership of the management, it should therefore be noted clearly that our managing director was never an appointee of Ondo state government but rather in the full employment of the company,” it said.
The statement added that the board wishes to make it clear that the company is a public company and is governed by the code of corporate governance, regulations of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the resolutions of its shareholders at its Annual General Meetings.
“The board hereby directs the public to disregard all false information as they can only be the work of mischief makers intended to forcefully change the Executive Management.”
