The Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) says it supports the suspension of the management of Investment and Allied Assurance by the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM). Mr Sunny Adeda, CIIN President, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Tuesday that NAICOM was doing its work.

“As regulator, NAICOM has the duty to protect the public from excesses of any operator. The institute NAICOM, had on Feb. 23, 2011, suspended the management of the company for tampering with N60 million belonging to policy holders.

Other reasons for the suspension are poor corporate governance, non-payment of claims and failure to account for N26.6 billion proceeds from private placements in the company. Mr Rasaq Salami, NAICOM Senior Manager in Charge of Corporate Affairs, said that the Commission acted in accordance with its statutory powers under part V11 of the NAICOM Act 1997.

Salami said the suspension took immediate effect and that NAICOM has assumed control of the company with the appointment of professionals to manage the affairs for an initial six months.

According to him, this development is sequel to findings during routine inspection of the company and its failure to correct lapses observed and brought to its attention by the Commission.

Salami alleged that IAA had no reinsurance cover as at the date of inspection in breach of Section 15 of the Insurance Act 2003 and the 2010 operational guidelines for insurers and reinsurers. He also said that the company had 65 outstanding claims of which 50 are long overdue for settlement.

According to Salami, the exact exposure of policy holders in the company will be determined by the interim management based on returns rendered in the fourth quarter of 2010. He said the amount due to policy holders as at Dec. 31, 2010 was N122 million, consisting of unearned premium of N90 million and outstanding claims of N32 million.

Salami said that the interim management would be expected to deal expeditiously with all valid claims due for payment. He said that the situation in the company would be reviewed after the initial six months to ascertain remedial actions following which any other necessary action to safeguard the insuring public would be announced.ing again, and we would be importing everything?

When I look at things, neither infrastructure nor research and development is there because it is from all these things that manufacturing can thrive, and if they are not there, what is the fate of Nigeria Industrial Standards, it means everything goes that comes to us. I thought about it four or five years ago when one of the inspection was being cancelled for Destination Inspection, and I said, well, we are not manufacturing, now, and if everything is going to come from outside, particularly China, what is my goal? That’s what led me to write soncap, and I was in the air when I wrote soncap guidelines.

Challenges
We didn’t have the resources that we needed, but we didn’t fold our hands. We worked very hard and most of the things that we put in place were able to generate funds for us which we used to do as much as we could.

Regrets
My regret is that the quality culture that we try to educate Nigerians to understand and imbibe, Nigerians have not understood it. And in the process of not imbibing quality culture, unscrupulous Nigerians have sabotage all of us including themselves. That is why provision should be made for the inclusion of standards in the country’s constitution. Such that when government is awarding contracts, they should always refers to standards on building projects that can withstand the test of times.

If you spend money to build railway, road that can not last a season, if you spend money to build water pipes that will burst, if you spend money to buy electricity meters that are substandard, then you will know that in five years’ time, we will be more in poverty than what we are today. So, we must be very careful to place standardisation in the wrong place. If we place it in the wrong place, then we are in for more trouble.

Rather than having order, we would have chaos, both political, physical or whatever, if there is no order, no standard, there will be chaos. So standard should be taken very seriously as in other countries. It should have a place in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Everything that should be done for this country must be adhere to standard, and those standard should be specify for the sake of our people. So standard plays a vital role in our journey to the next destination.