By  Funmi Komolafe & Victor Ahiuma- Young.

Partners to the Nigeria Labour Congress in the housing scheme, Kriston Lally EPC Nigeria Limited in its own side of the story released to the press on September 27, signed  by its Group Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Alhaji Mustapha Umar Madawaki went down memory lane:

“In March 2013, Kriston Enterprises of which Kriston Lally is a legal affiliate entered into an MoU and subsequent contractual agreement with the NLC.  The project for affordable housing  for Nigerian workers was based on this contract….. Kriston Lally was obliged to develop and provide affordable housing according to agreed prices to the depositors by the end of 2014.”

He however disclosed that “there is another part of the contract which the NLC has failed to mention to the public and this part of the contract is absolutely fundamental not only to the success of the project but it is fundamental to the very beginning — initialization of the project “.

Alhaji Madawaki stated with emphasis that “there are two articles in the contract, that is p.1.10 and p 5.1 which clearly laid out the responsibility and obligation of the NLC  to provide the land on which the developer, Kriston Lally was to, or is to build houses for Nigerian workers. The NLC has to date not provided land for the project on which Kriston Lally can build.”

Indeed, the NLC did not mention this in its press release dated September 22 signed by its President, Abdulwaheed Omar.

However, information available to Labour Vanguard confirms Kriston Lally’s statement .

The Rivers State Council of the NLC in a letter dated February 28, 2014 addressed to Kriston-Lally, signed by NLC state chairman, Chief Chris Oruge stated that “the Executive Governor of Rivers State, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi through the Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority has, on the 21st February, 2014 officially allotted us approximately 40 hectares of prime land at the Aluu- Omagwa axis of Greater Port Harcourt for use as Phase 1 of our affordable Housing Scheme”.

The state council asked the company to liaise with GPCDA for the “official formalities and establishment of boundaries.”

Furore over deposit 

According to NLC president, Abdulwaheed Omar, “ on October 4, 2013 , Congress decided that further subscription and collection of money be stopped to enable the project consolidate and deliver the first phase of houses to those who had subscribed within the promised time frame of December 2014. This decision was served on and acknowledged by Kriston-Lally on 4th October  2013.”

Omar added: “Congress became worried however as the take-off of the project kept on being delayed. Due to  the delay, a number of subscribers applied for refund of their deposits. In the bid to process applications for refunds, we encountered a bank teller which showed that a subscriber had paid the initial deposit into an account , other than the advertised NLC-Kriston Lally EPC.”

Kriston-Lally’s response: “When in October last year, NLC ordered that we should stop accepting deposits from subscribers, we posted that on our website and sent bulk SMS text messages to all those who subscribed.  We also informed the Bank in writing to freeze the X-Path system and to automacatically block further payments.

However, due to pressures from so many people and in particular from the leadership of NLC, especially, the NLC accountant, and one honourable NLC staff whose name evades me, it was decided to allow new clients to pay deposits into our operation account which was in existence since 2012.”

He further explained: “ This operational account was also used for the financing of Kriston-Lally’s contribution to the project: Acquisition of land, payment of salaries, certain administration costs and cash provided to the NLC president upon his requests and treats”.

In addition, Alhaji Madawaki stated: “It is noteworthy of mention that 60 per cent of our employees were nominated by NLC leadership which meant that we were responsible for training them since they came to us without professional experience”.

We had earlier reported that the NLC president told his National Administrative Council members that his signature was forged, a claim Kriston-Lally denied.

If indeed, some staff of NLC knew of the existence of this account, why did the NLC claim it had no knowledge of the account? Or is the NLC saying its staff did not act on its behalf?

Why didn’t Kriston-Lally officially communicate the development to NLC in black and white ?

….. So what is the fate of depositors?  Find out in our next edition.