Ifeanyi Ubah, Others Don’t Want to Pay Says AMCON

• Ifeanyi Ubah, Others Don’t Want to Pay Says AMCON

The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) has said the 20 debtors owing the company over 67 percent of the N5 trillion debt have the means to pay but have refused to do so intentionally.

The corporation also noted that their attitudes towards repayment can only be interpreted as “our own national cake”.

AMCON, however, reaffirmed its commitment to recovering the N5 trillion debt and said it has approached the court for approvals to seize some of the defaulters’ assets.

Jude Nwauzor, the Head of Corporate Affairs, AMCON, on Friday said AMCON has established that major debtors just don’t want to pay despite having the means to do so.

He said, “These 20 persons owe almost N4tn. We have several thousand accounts in our kitty and just like when you do your scale of preference, when we arrange it, there are top 20, 50, 100, and it moves on in that order.

“So what the chairman of AMCON talked about was that if we are able to resolve these 20, we would have done over 60 per cent of the total obligation, which, of course, is massive.

“We can only imagine what N5tn can do to a country where the government is borrowing to fund the budget.

“There are individuals in this country who hold on to this money and it is not that they don’t have the wherewithal to pay, but they just don’t want to pay because, for them, it is national cake. But this is taxpayers’ money. Some workers have died because of these people. Some institutions have been crippled because of them. The economy is also suffering because of them.”

Here are the names of top 20 debtors

Speaking on why AMCON is yet to release the complete names of all debtors, Nwauzor said it was because some of them had cases with the corporation in court.

He said, “We are not just trying to identify these people; they are people we know and on several occasions, our chairman had at one point or the other mentioned their names.

“Most of these obligors are also in court with us, which is why you can’t just go out to reel out names, especially when you have a case that is before a court of competent jurisdiction.

“So, it is not that we are trying to shield the names, we know them but we need to be careful how we mention them, especially when they are undergoing hearings from the court.”

The Vice-President, Ministeries, and Agencies had constituted a team of taskforce to go after AMCON debtors last week, saying the top 20 who are owing more than 67 percent or N4 trillion of the total debt are presently the target of the new task force.