By Oduche Azih
SAT, 28 MAY, 2022-theGBJournal| Since I have no money involved here, so as to be able to claim a locus standi, I have painfully stood by the sidelines, in muted amazement, while this debate and shuffling raged over the past several months.
WHAT IF either of billionaire Femi Otedola and the other “contender” owned about 10% shareholding each. Could they as major individual shareholders afford to posture as MAJORITY shareholders in the presence of huge Pension Funds, Teachers, Nurses, Dockworkers & Stevedores and other Labour Unions.
Only in Nigeria!
The amazing thing is that oligarchs, the likes of Otedola and Oba Otudeko, willingly let the complicit/ignorant Nigerian media run with this disinformation.
It’s one huge ego trip.
If the issue is one of the control of the Board and Management, a collaborative set of not-so-major shareholders, controlling some 35% or so can call the shots to the chagrin of the likes of Otedola. Otedola wouldn’t necessarily roll over without a fight.
However this notion of amassing 7 to 10% of the outstanding shares of a major undertaking in Nigeria and then strutting all over the place as a majority(?) shareholder would have been laid to rest.
I hate to cite examples from the US. Those who follow such fights know that the likes of corporate raiders and turnaround guru Carl Icahn cannot ever ignore the very liquid and powerful United Farm Workers, the Teachers’ Union and the United Automobile Workers unions in any of their plans, which had better not be nefarious.
Everything goes back to corporate governance. I envisage the courts being kept very busy to back up silent majority investors whose silence is often taken for granted, when they wake up to reassert themselves. Some have pointed out that, left unregulated, the private sector can be as bad and corrupt as any NNPC, to cite an obvious example.
Oduche Azih, Lagos
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