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Managing Director, AMCON, Gbenga Alade
The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria has insisted that it will recover all the debt owed by a Nigerian carrier, Arik Air.
AMCON, which is currently managing the airline in receivers, stated that the corporation is not unaware of the false claims that the owner of the airline, Johnson Arumem-Ikhide, has been paddling against it and its officials, but it insisted that the matter was already in court.
The Head of Corporate Communication at AMCON, Jude Nwauzor, said the total debts of Arumem-Ikhide, the owner of Arik Air, currently stand at N455, 171, 764, 772.80 as of December 31, 2024, in all his investments.
Nwauzor stated these on Friday in Lagos during an interaction with aviation correspondents.
AMCON also said that its intervention in the troubled airline in February 2017 saved the carrier from liquidation.
It promised that it would ensure the recovery of the total debts owed to the corporation by various business organisations.
Giving the breakdown of the total debts, Nwauzor alleged that Arik as of December 2024, owed AMCON N227. 6billion; Rockson Engineering, N163.5 billion, while Ojemai Farms owed the corporation another N14 billion, totaling N455billion.
The three indebted companies are owned by Arumem-Ikhide.
The AMCON publicist further said that Arumem-Ikhide, in some of its agreements with AMCON, agreed to the debts owed the corporation, and signed an agreement on payback, but failed to honour his words.
AMCON insisted that despite the campaign of calumny against it, it would ensure the debts were recovered and return the companies to profitability.
PUNCH Online gathered that AMCON took over the debts from Union Bank and Bank PHB (now Keystone Bank) to make the banks continue to survive in business.
Nwauzor noted that Arik Air was taken over through due process.
According to him, AMCON had been part of Arik Air since 2011 but was compelled to take over the company in 2017 through the appointment of a receiver manager after several interventions failed.
He explained that the receiver manager also had the option of either managing or selling off the assets of a debtor company like Arik Air, but AMCON decided to keep the airline running through the intervention of the Federal Government.
He said, “If you recall, at the time, there was no Air Peace, United Nigeria, and a few other airlines that we have today.
“The Federal Government, at the time, suggested to AMCON to save the over 1,500 jobs that would have been lost if the airline was liquidated, advised us to manage the airline. That was the mandate of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
“As you know, AMCON is owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Ministry of Finance and guided by the Act that set it up. What that means is that you cannot play outside the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If push comes to shove, we have the option to liquidate the company and any other debtor organisation. But, we are still today managing Arik, which was insolvent in 2015.
“We did the forensic evaluation of Arik Air in 2015 and 2016. The report wrote off Arik as an insolvent company. The experts proposed that we should liquidate the airline and move away. Even, the liquidators would not have recovered a fraction of the debts.”
Scrutiny of a document provided by AMCON to our correspondent showed that no fewer than 19 of the 30 aircraft taken over by AMCON were not operational at the time of the takeover by AMCON,
Efforts to speak with the spokesperson for Arik Air owner, Lanre Bamgbose, were unsuccessful as he neither picked up his call nor responded to text messages of enquiries on the subject matter.
