Bizman in bank loan repayment palaver - As fire destroys investment

Alyx Joseph Offorjama, the victim

Yekini Jimoh writes on the pathetic situation of a businessman whose warehouse was gutted by fire a few months after obtaining a bank loan to finance its construction as well as his automotive battery sales business.

Would it mark an end to his once-thriving business and investment? Or would he still rise again with the help of the insurance firm he subscribed to through a bank?

These and other thoughts are on-going in the mind of businessman Alyx Joseph Offorjama who is yet to come to terms with the mysterious fire that dealt him a financial blow when his business office, located at Taiwo road, Ilorin, in Kwara State was gutted by fire precisely on November 1, 2007.

After the fire was doused, the destruction to his office building was valued at millions of naira. Mr. Offorjama, who is into automotive battery business, while narrating his ordeal to the Nigerian Tribune, explained that the fire incident which started from the ground floor of the building which he used as his warehouse, destroyed about 80 per cent of the office complex.

Speaking on the incident, Offorjama said the fire started in the evening around 10 p.m. on that fateful day. He stated that the fire remained a mystery to him as there was no electricity at the time the incident started, though the police said the incident was as a result of high voltage from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) when light was restored.

Offorjama’s warehouse, which was stocked with batteries worth millions of naira, was completely burnt and nothing could be salvaged from the building. Speaking further, the businessman said the most painful part of it was that, on August 31, 2007, he obtained a loan of N30 million naira from a new generation bank, the terms and conditions of the loan, which was duly agreed to on September, 14th 2007 by both parties via signing of the Offer Letter, saw him authorising the mortgage of his newly completed head office building to the bank.

He said aside the loan, the building also had a comprehensive Insurance Policy to be undertaken by an insurance company, Intercontinental Wapic Insurance Plc on his behalf with Intercontinental Bank as First Loss Payee. “Things could have been different had the bank and Wapic Insurance Plc been on hand to readily pay the claim of N400m and N60m, totalling N460m being the insurance value of stocks and the building respectively, as concluded by the valuers appointed by the bank,” Offorjama lamented.

He also disclosed that he engaged a firm of chartered accountants to assist him in liaising with new generation bank to ascertain his liabilities and benefits with the bank but the bank failed to co-operate with the firm. A letter from the bank in question, dated 11th of December 2007, signed by an authorised signatory and addressed to the chartered accounting firm, which copy was made available to Nigerian Tribune read thus: “We write in response to your request for a copy of the Insurance Policy as regard our bank’s loan to our common client- Mr. Alyx Joseph Offorjama. Please be informed that the processing of the insurance of the pledged property (collateral) with our bank noted as first loss payee was on-going as at the time the fire accident occurred,”.

According to the agreement with the bank, “the facility shall be repaid within the tenure hereby granted from proceeds from sales of the brands of Forgo Automotive Batteries and or other sources of income of the Borrower”. He said that all these had completely thrown him into despair as his entire investment was consumed in the fire outbreak, appealing to the bank to look into his plight on time.