By Dele Sobowale

ECOBANK Transnational Incorporated has announced the departure of Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr Thiery Tanoh with effect from March 12, 2014..” PUNCH, March 12, 2014 p 29.

The report by Oyetunji Abioye, also said that “SEC investigated the lender after do Rego [the Group Executive Director of Finance and Risk] told the SEC in August that Tanoh and former Chairman, Kolapo Lawson planned to sell assets below market value. Do Rego said she was pressured to write off debts owed by a business headed by Lawson and manipulate the bank’s results. Tanoh and Lawson have denied any wrongdoing,”

Once upon a time, there was a successful and highly esteemed indigenous conglomerate called the Lawson Group of Companies headed by Chief Adeyemi Lawson, old boy of Ilesha Grammar School, Osun State, lawyer, former Lagos City Councillor, also known as the founder of the Grail Movement in Nigeria. Mr Kolapo Lawson, scion of the late Chief, unlike the Ojukwus, Dantatas and Abiolas, was brought into the family business quite early – leaving no doubt in anybody’s mind about who the successor to the helm would be. Kolapo, an old King’s College boy, Chartered Accountant and educated at the best institutions money could make possible, would have been voted as the Inheritor Most Likely To Succeed. Under him, the Lawson Group had disappeared into oblivion.

By his removal, Kolapo Lawson has joined the ranks of Chairmen and Board members of banks — who were forced to step down under clouds of allegations regarding possible fraud or attempted mismanagement of bank funds. In that connection, he also joined his late father, who was one of the first indigenous promoters of banks – all but one of which were later liquidated. Late Chief Lawson’s bank was one of those which went under during that era of bank failures – mostly on account of directors engaging in insider trading, borrowing from their banks and not repaying the loans and asking Financial Directors to juggle the books to cover up the crimes until it was impossible to bury the truth anymore.

My father, a tin miner in Jos, but with accounts in Lagos, was among the hundreds of thousands of Nigerians, especially Yorubas, who opened accounts with the so-called tiwa ni tiwa (this is our own) banks which tried to compete with the Bank of British West Africa (now First Bank) and Barclays Bank, D.C.O (now Union Bank). The promise, with which the victims were lured into their traps, was simple – they would extend credit to those who were denied facilities by the colonial banks.  Virtually everybody lived to regret believing them. Today, off Herbert Macaulay Way, Ebute Meta, one building still carries the name Agbonmagbe Bank. It was the Titanic of all the banks that sank in the first sector wide failure in Nigeria’s banking history. It remains a monument to a war our fathers lost.

The difference between Kolapo and late Chief and their banks lies in the fact that the ECOBANK Transnational has not gone belly up – at least not yet. But, the lamentation of the biggest shareholder, represented by one Mr Elias Masilela, speaking ‘bankese’, which is the official language of bankers when covering up the unpleasant truth, points to the possibility that Tandoh and Lawson had left ECOBANK in a bit of a mess. After all, nobody pressures the Chief Financial Officer of a firm to “manipulate results” if they were good to begin with. Only time will tell if ECOBANK will survive the shock. Otherwise, it will amount to two generations of Lawsons sinking two banks.

To some extent, the ECOBANK debacle serves as a point of departure for this article on the Lawson Group – which, like all great establishments has failed to survive the first generation of founders (Edewor, Fajemirokun, Odutola, Ekene Dili Chukwu, etc). In all fairness to Kolapo, the Lawson Group of Companies, like some others we shall be touching upon, was already unraveling – even before his father handed him the baton. Some enterprises in the group of the companies, especially the beverages division (West African Breweries, North Brewery, Kano, Jos International Breweries, Sunrise Bottling Company, Ijebu-Ode and Associated Breweries, Agbara), were in a shambles and close to liquidation. Even the Agbara Estate conceived of originally as the largest residential/industrial estate in Africa, was heavily in debt and cash was being juggled, sometimes in off balance sheet deals, from one company to another to stave off creditors.

Kolapo’s baptism of fire occurred when he was posted to the West African Breweries, Iponri, at a time when the three surviving brands – TOP lager, BARRON lager and VITAMALT were facing serious challenges. The Ipori Brewery was supposed to be the extension to the main brewery at Abeokuta. But, the Abeokuta brewery had closed down on account of one of the most costly mistakes an extremely brilliant entrepreneur, Chief Adeyemi Lawson, had ever made. And, before Chief knew it, the closure created collateral damage in other breweries, especially, North Brewery, Kano, which was making tons of money.