As of 3pm on Thursday, June 6, reports reaching BusinessDay was that armed security personnel, on the directive of the SEC, were still present in Oando’s head
office building.
The armed security personnel became residents in Oando’s Ozumba Mbadiwe office on Monday, June 3, occupying the ground floor reception as well as the stairwells, intimidating employees from resuming to business as usual for fear of accidental discharge. Reports began circulating on Monday that the armed men had laid siege at their office and had caused widespread alarm and panic among Oando employees.
An employee of one of the corporate tenants at the Wings Office Complex, where
Oando’s head office is located, said he was taken by surprise when he got to the office on Monday to see so many armed personnel in the ground floor reception. “It just seemed odd when I saw all these policemen but I didn’t take much notice – the building has quite a number of tenants so I didn’t think too much about it. Later in the day everybody in the office was talking about how they had taken over the Oando offices and then I got a little panicked.
Having no idea what the issue is with Oando, I was worried about the outcome of a full blown altercation with armed personnel. You know in this Nigeria one has to be careful when dealing with someone with a gun,” he said. The presence of the armed men on the directives of the SEC has intimidated the company’s employees and disrupted normal business activities in Oando. The disruption to normal business activity will not only impact the company but will also impact the country at large, specifically since the release of the SEC’s directives the company has seen a downward spiral in their stock price.
A letter from the Lagos commissioner of Police clearly states that they were deployed to Oando on the directives of the SEC director-general to maintain law and order. What does the SEC hope to achieve through intimidation in a free country? As Nkechi Agbanusi, a legal attorney, said: “The SEC’s action is what you can describe as Dictatorial Democracy, on the surface they are the regulator with the best interest of the market at heart, but in truth they are destroying value.”
