Computer mogul, Dr Leo Stan Ekeh has revealed how his competitors in an attempt to bring his business down derailed efforts by the administration of Muhammadu Buhari to conduct population census for the country before handing over to President Bola Tinubu.
Ekeh, Chairman of Zinox Group made the revelation while warning a group of his mentees recently to guard against blackmailers and petition writers who deploy crocked tactics to run down their competitors so as to gain undeserved business advantages.
According to him, the competitors flooded the federal Government and its agencies/parastatals with so many petitions that by the time the immediate past Government finished clearing with the petitions and awarded the contract for the supply of the computers needed to conduct the census, it was too late for the Buhari Administration to proceed with the project.
According to Ekeh, this was the reason the last Administration had to hand over the project to the then incoming Tinubu Administration.
The computer Guru mentioned an Ibadan, Oyo state based computer company boss as the blackmailer who deployed the services of two popular law firms owned by two prominent senior advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and some social media blogs in intensive but frivolous petitions, litigations and mass media blackmail.
Their nefarious activities, Ekeh went on forced the Buhari Administration to delay action in awarding the contract to supply the needed computers to Zinox in good time.
He told his mentees that Buhari had found the petitions to be without merit and that the Government went ahead to award the contract to Zinox and that the contract was executed within the agreed time but it was too late for Buhari to continue with the census.
“The new fraud is Corporate and Personality blackmail which my companies and I have fallen victims of, and I am sure you read some in the newspapers where CEOs of responsible corporations in Nigeria are tagged fraudsters.
“This is the work of blackmailers, and they partner with a few blogs, engage some innocent respected law firms for hyping and a few government officials to achieve their set objectives to destroy your corporate and personal reputations.
“These negative online materials are then lifted by Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms so that when people search your organisation or personal names, you are seen as a crook.
“This is with the intent to destroy your brand and affect your credit rating globally.
“In some cases, they sue you in multiple courts in Nigeria for the noise and to have the content to continue to upload on various social media platforms.
“Having set this platform against you, your competitors would leverage them to blackmail you.
“In some cases, they secure a Fiat from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation to give an impression that the Federal Government is suing you for fraud, which allegations they cannot prove in courts.
“My integrated technology group is the largest on the continent and it is for this reason that we have the second highest credit rating in the tech sector as far as I have been told in the whole of Africa. What this means is that, if you award us a contract of over $5billion, we don’t need to borrow to execute because we are trusted. “In 38 years of tech entrepreneurship, we have done a global turnover of over $23.7billion and not borrowed a kobo from any financial institution in the world and we do not owe any”, Ekeh stated.
He said that it was after much delay that Buhari ignored the blackmailers and gave his firm the contract.
“So, a few days after, President Muhammadu Buhari, based on submissions at the Federal Executive Council meeting, approved that the contract be awarded to Zinox Technologies Ltd based on competence, capacity and experience. And it was awarded to Zinox Technologies after months of blackmail to eliminate us from the deal.
“We delivered the project on time per our terms of engagement, but it was too late for the previous administration to conduct the Digital Census.
“What it means is that these blackmailers with support of people like” the 2 SANs “caused the lack of credible data to move the country forward as all the equipment procured for the census are lying waste in warehouses nationwide.”
“That’s shameless Nigerians for you and they walk the street as free men till date.
“This is the cause of the Nigeria digital Census project delay till date and equipment worth over N300billion are wasting in warehouses because my competitors and their sponsors at the highest level used them” … “to secure a Fiat against my name, my wife, my companies to tag us as frauds.
“By their action, Zinox almost lost a digital census contract of over $250million of which it was the most qualified.”
Ekeh urged President Tinubu and the Federal Attorney General/Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi to probe into the delay in conducting the census and to avoid being derailed by the same blackmailers and their cohorts.
Turning to his mentees, the computer guru said: “Please, as stakeholders and future Nigerian trillionaires, learn from my experience but you must not dine with blackmailers as technologies shall soon delete them from the tech ecosystem” , advising the mentees not to lose hope in the Nigerian economy, as he projects that the country shall start returning to a comfortable zone from the 3rd quarter of 2025
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
