The ongoing business crisis facing Emeka Offor, one of Nigeria’s
most controversial contractors in recent decades, is far deeper than
SaharaReporters revealed last week, a fresh investigation has
revealed. Mr. Offor’s financial downfall has led to the closure
of his offices in Abuja, his companies’ failure to pay staff
salaries for more than a year, and long drawn fights
with numerous suppliers and creditors.
BY
SAHARA REPORTERS, NEW YORK
AUG
18, 2016
The ongoing business crisis facing Emeka
Offor, one of Nigeria’s most controversial contractors in recent
decades, is far deeper than SaharaReporters revealed last week, a fresh
investigation has revealed. Mr. Offor’s financial downfall
has led to the closure of his offices in Abuja, his companies’ failure
to pay staff salaries for more than a year, and long drawn
fights with numerous suppliers and creditors. Last
week, SaharaReporters had disclosed that the controversial government
contractor, who was once frequently described in the media as
a major financier of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had fallen
on hard times since Muhammadu Buhari became president on May 29, 2015,
following his defeat of former President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP in
last year’s presidential election.
Sources within Mr. Offor’s family and
erstwhile corporate circles disclosed that the hamstrung businessman, who
hails from Oraifite in Anambra State, is experiencing serious health
challenges and an unprecedented family crisis.
One of Mr. Offor’s cousins told our
investigator that the embattled businessman’s eyesight has been deteriorating
progressively in recent years, leaving him a step away from
blindness. A former corporate aide who had traveled with the
businessman in the past revealed that Mr. Offor also has a heart
problem as well as a problem with diabetes. “It is possible that it
is the diabetes which led to the other complications, including his failing
sight,” a medical expert told our correspondent.
Mr. Offor’s home front is probably more
in disarray than his health. Last January, his first wife,
Nkiru Offor, whom he married in December 1982, as well as her
children stormed Mr. Offor’s village of Irefi in Oraifite, Ekwusigo Local
Government Area of Anambra State, and created mayhem in the
near-bankrupt businessman’s palatial country home. Along
with her children, Mrs. Nkiru Offor, who resides on Osborne Road
in Ikoyi, Lagos, arrived at her husband’s home in Oraifite and chased
away all the domestic staff, changed all the door
locks, smashed most of the expensive drinks in the house
and destroyed all the pictures Mr. Offor took with his
third wife, Adaora, a dropout from the Law Department at
the Enugu Campus of the University of Nigeria at Nsukka (UNN). The
businessman’s wedding to the former law student was
celebrated at Oraifite on January 3, 2014, at a lavish ceremony where thousands
of iPads were handed out as gifts to hundreds of guests.
“Nkiru came with her children to take physical
control of the Oraifite residence because they are afraid that our
brother [Mr. Offor] will hand it over to the third
wife,” said a close relative of the businessman. He added:
“You see, Nkiru had just survived a mild stroke in Lagos. She told some of
us that she believes the stroke was a spiritual attack from Sir Emeka
Offor and Adaora [Mr. Offor’s third wife] in an attempt to kill
her. She also complained that our brother [Mr. Offor] hates
her children.”
The source revealed that Chuka, Mr.
Offor’s thirty-something year old first son with his first
wife, continues to reside in London where he loiters
daily because he has no job. The source declared that Mr. Offor had
refused all entreaties to employ the young man in one of his companies. “Sir E.
[a fond name for Mr. Offor] said Chuka should not work in his companies,
claiming his son is not a graduate. And when Nkiru now
bought a Range Rover for Chuka, a big fight took
place between her and Sir E.”
Mr. Offor’s troubled relationship with his
first wife has been exacerbated by the fact that
their first daughter has two children out of wedlock for
a young man who hails from Ondo State. Several family
sources disclosed that Mr. Offor’s first daughter has been living
with the father of her children for several years. “The young
man wants to marry Sir. E’s daughter, but Sir E. refused to accept him as
a son-in-law, insisting that he is above his daughter marrying
a man who is not from a very wealthy home.”
But some of Mr. Offor’s relatives said
they found the embattled businessman’s aristocratic airs quite
laughable. “Was he [Mr. Offor] not a truck driver with a
construction company before he made money during the time of Abacha?” one
female relative wondered. She added, “Did he pass even one subject when he
took his West African School Certificate examination at
Abbot Boys Secondary School in Ihiala [Anambra State]?”
Another family member told our
correspondent that Mrs. Nkiru Offor, the first
wife, is about the only person Mr. Offor fears. Said the source:
“When our father died in February and our eldest brother traveled to the
village, he slept in a hotel because he could not gain access
his house in Oraifite.” The source said Mr. Offor left quietly
when he was told what his first wife had done with the locks,
including locks of the residence he built overnight for his third wife
toward the end of 2013. “Nkiru knows all his dark secrets, so
he is careful not to provoke her easily,” said the
relative.
Most family members appear to support Mr. Offor’s
first wife, despite accusations against her by her husband that
she is obsessed with fetish practices. “Even if she is into occult things,
we know he [Mr. Offor] introduced her to those practices,” a female member asserted.
“So why is he now complaining?” she queried.
SaharaReporters learned that Mr. Offor’s
father was the only person who attempted to stop Mrs. Nkiru Offor the day she
and her children were smashing and slashing things at his country
residence. One family member alleged that Mr. Offor’s feeble father, who
had suffered a stroke a few years earlier, got pushed down
in the melee. “He [Mr. Offor’s father] soon slipped into a
coma in a hospital and died one and a half months later,” said
the source.
Some of the family members who spoke
to our correspondents made no secret of gloating
over Mr. Offor’s financial and other crises. They accused him
of bluntlyrefusing to offer financial assistance to most
of his siblings and other relatives when he wallowed
in immense wealth.
“We strongly believe he belongs to a secret
cult to which he swore never to assist family members, including those in
desperate need,” one of them stated.
The relatives disclosed that only two members
of Mr. Offor’s extended family benefited from his
wealth. “The first person was our father who died since February but has
yet to be buried because Sir E. is looking for big cash to
spend during the burial so he can create the impression that he is
still very loaded,” said one relative.
The source said the second member of
the family to have benefited from Mr. Offor’s now dwindled wealth “is
Onyebuchi whom he put into the Anambra State House of Assembly as a
legislator last year, despite protests from voters and stakeholders in our
constituency who said the election was not free and fair.”
Two relatives
told SaharaReporters that Mr. Offor was close to his late
father, but detested his mother because she often questioned his excesses. One
family source said the controversial businessman had on several
occasions sent his father on trips abroad, but never allowed
his mother,who hails from Esanland in Edo State, to travel even to
Lagos. Mr. Offor’s deceased father was a police officer, and was
once demoted from inspector to sergeant because of a
successful petition of bribery against him by Ignatius Nwabueze, the late
leader of the Rosicrucian Order in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra
State.
Bismarck Rewane, one of Nigeria's most
respected economists and the chief executive of Financial Derivatives
Consulting, has argued that, with the emergence of Mr. Buhari as
president, many Nigerian millionaires, especially those enriched by
fraudulent government contracts, would soon become ex-millionaires.
Mr. Offor, who has been pushing
close friends like former Senate president Ken Nnamani to join the ruling All
Progressives Congress in a move to ingratiate himself with President
Buhari, may be one of the most dramatic examples of financial
catastrophe striking erstwhile profiteers from corrupt contracts. Mr.
Offor’s combination of financial woes, marital troubles and crash from
political relevance, appear to make Mr. Rewane’s statement very prophetic.
