AMCON Goes After Over 5000 debtors In Hiding

BY CHINYERE OBIORA, LAGOS – The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) says there will be no hiding place for over 5000 debtors whose whereabouts are currently unknown in the country.

AMCON’s Managing Director, Ahmed Kuru said the Corporation is determined to explore every legal step towards recovering public funds in the possession of debtors that have relocated from their former places of abode without trace. 

According to him, AMCON will soon publish a comprehensive list of debtors as part of measures to mobilise public support towards tracing their whereabouts and ensuring there is no hiding place for them in the task of recovering public funds. 

Kuru also explained that before dragging anyone to court, AMCON usually engages the affected debtor for about five years on the need to fulfill his/her obligations on the outstanding loans.

He also said there are certain types of obligors, who cannot pay their debts, adding that though their values may have diminished, the AMCON Act does not allow the management to write them off like the banks, until the winding down of the Corporation. 

“At the end, if there is any outstanding issue, we hand them over to NDIC and CBN. One thing is certain. Even if you extend the life of AMCON for 20 years, it will not be able to recover all the loans. By 2023 to 2024, the Corporation is expected to wind down. However, the banks will continue to contribute to the sinking fund. If after operating for 10 years, in addition to 2 to 5 years when the facilities were still domiciled with the commercial banks and we couldn’t do anything that means there is nothing else we can do.”

“The issue is that the moment we continue to allow organizations like this to continue to exist for a long time, it encourages rascality in the credit administration system”, the AMCON boss said. 

He said experience has shown that quite a lot of businesses have gone down because of governance issues. For instance, he said in aviation industry, there is no airline in Nigeria that has operated for 10 years successfully without problems such that we can say that this is a model of an airline.

He said there was a fundamental structural problem, adding that people must be held accountable for any form of impunity. 

Kuru said it was human beings that are responsible for the problems being experienced in the companies, adding that “When you give people a perfect document they look for where there is loophole. If there is none, they create one on the document. Since 1999, it is only this week that Nigeria convicted only one governor. People go away with any form of impunity.”