How Ooni Companies Executed Biggest Fraud In Nigeria’s Real Estate History – FIJ

How Ooni Ogunwusi’s Companies Executed the Biggest Fraud in Nigeria’s Real Estate History — and Got Away With it

After his companies allocated apartments and land that existed only on paper to hundreds of investors, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi became the Ooni of Ife, making him highly connected culturally and politically and somewhat above the law. As if emboldened by the proverbial saying that ‘a king has dominion over all things’, hundreds of investors were never refunded. Gran Imperio Group’s multi-million-naira Essential Homes scheme is described by many as the biggest fraud seen yet in Nigeria’s real estate history.

In October 2014, Mrs Offiong (not real name) received some documents from Metropole Interproject Limited introducing the sale of a “one unit of three-bedroom corner piece bungalow apartment at South Pointe II Estate” at Ajah, Lagos, for N17,967,000 million. She was instructed to pay 50 percent of the cost if she accepted the offer.

Retiring at the top cadre in the civil service after 30 years, she did not hesitate to invest her gratuity because the supposed estate was in a prime location: the building’s specifications and the estate’s facilities as stated in the contract looked top notch; the delivery date was less than a year away in August 2015.

Shortly after paying the initial deposit of N8,983,500 million to Metropole Interproject Limited and a receipt bearing the name of its parent company, Gran Imperio Group, was issued to Mrs Offiong. On a scheduled visit to the site, Gran Imperio Group took subscribers to South Pointe One, instead of South Pointe II.

“They told us that South Point II was not ready yet, so they took us to South Pointe One to show us what two would look like when it was ready,” said Mrs Offiong’s son, James (not real name), who went with his mother to the site. “There was a bit of confusion that day. We suspected that something was not right but we calmed down when they told us about another estate that would be completed before South Pointe II.”

In a letter to subscribers in February 2015, Adiukwu Kechi, an official of the company, notified subscribers of the need to pay their next instalment. To get them to commit to completing their payments, although no land was shown to subscribers during the site visit, Kechi added: “We have been magnanimous to move you to a site that is beside South Pointe II and will be completed earlier than South Pointe II too, which is Golden Leaf Estate, and a final allocation will be issued too.”

FINAL DEPOSIT YET NO HOUSE

On the day Mrs Offiong made the final deposit of N8,983,500 million, she received a letter from another staff of Metropole Limited, Nnamdi Ukpabi, notifying her of the allotment of ‘Block F Unit 1’. But on the delivery date of August 2015, Mrs Offiong and hundreds of other subscribers found out that what they had were buildings and land on paper; they had been defrauded by companies headed at the time by Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, a man later crowned the Ooni of Ife in December of the same year.

Many investors, citing fear of backlash from the monarch, declined to go on record, but they accused the company of defrauding them. FIJ managed to track five people who agreed to provide documents and correspondences with the companies’ officials on the condition that their identities were not revealed. Visits to the locations of the supposed estates, revealed that the estate schemes never materialised.

Main Gate of the property identified as Golden Leaf estate. The security guard did not allow access beyond this point. There are no 380 apartments on the land after seven years. Photo credit: Adeola Oladipupo/FIJ
Gran Imperio Group’s subsidiary companies, including Howard Roark Limited and Metropole Interproject Limited, were involved in ‘Essential Homes’, an ambitious scheme to build and deliver 1,000 affordable bungalow houses to middle and low income earners by the end of 2015. Launched in 2014, six estates — Lakeview Park I and II; Mid-Land Court; South Pointe I, II; Golden Leaf Estate; Y’hello Estate — were reportedly created by the company.

FIJ’s check on the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) portal of real estate companies with links to Ooni Ogunwusi revealed that Gran Imperior Group of Companies was registered in November 14, 2013, while Howard Roark Limited was registered in 2008. They have inactive status on the portal, which possibly means that they had not filed tax documents in a long time. Metropole Interproject Limited did not appear on the CAC portal.

Investigations by FIJ confirmed that Ogunwusi and 13 others are directors of Gran Imperio Group of Companies. The Ooni of Ife also sits as director on the board of Howard Roark Limited.

ESSENTIAL HOMES: CUTTING CORNERS BY BUILDING WITH FAKE MATERIALS ON ENCROACHED LAND

“…We will work towards satisfying our subscribers…,” Ogunwusi said in 2015.

“We like to distinguish between completed development and successfully completed development. For us, a project is successfully completed when it is fully occupied.”

But some estates in the Essential Homes scheme were not successful. While many units in South Pointe One were built with substandard materials, others were built on a land that does not belong to Gran Imperio. Golden Leaf Estate did not materialise and South Pointe Two does not exist!

“Fortunately, I got my house, though in a sub-standard state. I did what I needed to do and moved on with my life,” replied an investor in South Pointe One, asked by FIJ to be interviewed for this investigation. “Those that I think need your story more are those who paid but didn’t get anything and those whose houses were built on land that doesn’t belong to the Ooni.”

Indeed, for other investors, it was not just substandard buildings; they do not have title deeds recognised by the Land Bureau, a problem tying down their investment, making them unable to sell the properties.

“Apparently, Gran Imperio trespassed into some of the Ojomu land and did not have the right to build my two units on in,” said Mrs Ajenifuja (not real name), an investor in the South Pointe One and Lakeview Park Two. “I have tried now for four to five years with no luck with the Ojomu family as they claimed they were still having issues with Gran Imperio.”

Investors who paid as much as N30million for a unit told FIJ that many of the apartments built in Lakeview Park Two and South Pointe One did not meet the specifications stated in the contract. They had to spend more money to make the apartments habitable.

“For South Pointe one, I had to do the finishing myself. It was like demolishing and building a new house,” said Ms Mallama (not real name), who paid N11 million deposit for Golden Leaf the same period she invested in South Pointe One. “I took them to court over the delay and substandard building and was given a judgment against them and awarded damages which they haven’t paid. I just left it.”

The buildings were also delivered late — as much as nine months after the stipulated delivery date — a breach of agreement that should have made Gran Imperio liable to paying a default fee of 2.5 percent of the deposit received. But investors never got that payment.

NO PROPERTY, NO REFUND. ESTATE PROMOTED BY THE OONI DOES NOT EXIST

In 2015, Ogunwusi stated that Golden Leaf Estate, a 380-unit apartment developed in collaboration with the British American Tobacco Company (BATC), was undergoing construction and would be delivered in a year.

Subscribers were required to make an initial deposit of 30 percent of the offer price, 40 percent at roofing stage and 30 percent upon completion. Six years later, hundreds of subscribers neither got apartments nor refunds.

Mr Jonathan Abu (not real name) was one of them. He initially subscribed to South Pointe Two but agreed to be moved to Golden Leaf Estate because of the ‘boys quarters’ attached to the bungalow and its proximity to his work place on the Island.

After he made the first deposit of N6,139,800 in March 2015, nothing happened on the land and he never heard from Metropole Interproject Limited until August 2016, nearly a year and a half after. In a letter signed by two directors of the company, Taiwo Akintayo and Isaac Etim, the company stated that it did not meet delivery schedule because of “unresolved land acquisition issue”. It said a relocation of the project to another site was in consideration.

‘I WOULD SAY I WAS DEFRAUDED’

Abu had had enough and he wanted his money back, but he never got it. The company, again, breached a provision in the contract that monies would be returned 90 days after a request was made.

“I would say I was defrauded,” he said. “Besides money, I have to stay in traffic for two hours, the impact on my health in terms of the wear and tear and cannot be quantified.”

FIJ also gathered that employees of the BATC who invested in Golden Leaf estate through the company’s cooperative society did not get properties or refunds. BATC did not respond to FIJ’s request for comments.

More Investors Onboarded to Already Distressed Projects

In a sworn affidavit by Isaac Etim, one of the directors of Metropole Interproject Limited in 2016, in response to a winding up petition written by an investor, the company blamed the country’s economic crisis for failing to deliver projects. But investors argued that Nigeria’s economy only began slowing in growth in 2016.

The director made claims that Metropole could refund the investors and that it had assets. A lawyer to some investors found these claims to be untrue.

It is not clear when economic downturn began affecting the real estate project; nevertheless, analyses of documents received from subscribers showed that many times in the two years preceding the 2016 economic recession, the company continued accepting money from investors and promised different delivery dates. In February 2015, the media reported Ogunwusi promoting the real estate scheme.

After telling investors that economic downturn was why they could not deliver the projects, directors of the company shifted blame to land acquisition challenge.
Correspondence to investors by directors of the company also blamed land acquisition issues for the delay. A reason not many believe; they accuse the firm of not doing due diligence before collecting billions of naira from investors.

Some investors pondered why new subscribers were onboarded when the project was supposedly undergoing challenges that would make completion difficult, and why the promoters could neither show proof of land nor uncompleted buildings if truly the project was started but stalled by economic recession.

A letter to all subscribers by Bamidele Arowolo, Gran Imperio’s Chief Operating Officer, assuring them that all “hindrances” had been resolved and apartments would be delivered from May 2016 turned out false.

The company subsequently relocated to an unknown location and staff members stopped replying mails and answering phone calls, investors lamented.

BILLIONS COLLECTED BUT NO PROPERTY, NO REFUNDS

Having seen Ooni Ogunwusi rub shoulders with politically powerful peole, including President Muhammadu Buhari, who many times said that no acts of corruption would go unpunished in his administration, some investors, at the time, got discouraged and simply “handed the matter to God”. Others who frantically headed to court soon found that it was an exercise in futility.

With multiple law suits, Ogunwusi’s company selected court hearings to attend and failed to honour out-of-court agreements and judgments, FIJ was told. While some were refunded a fraction of the money they invested, others got nothing.

“So when we went to court and they never showed up, I just knew nothing would come out of this. They probably would just kill the case,” said Oluwashina (not real name) who lost N5,010,000 to the South Pointe Two scheme and was not refunded. It was the first major project he started with his wife.

Receipt issued to Oluwashina after the second tranch of the initial payment was deposited.
In addition to suspicions by subscribers that Ooni Ogunwusi was using his influence to frustrate the court cases against his companies is the question: is the company financially capable of paying hundreds of investors it owes millions of naira?

Isaac Etim, one of the directors of Metropole Interproject limited, claimed in a sworn affidavit that the company was “solvent” and in “good financial standing”, adding that “the sum being requested by the petitioners cannot be compared to total assets and worth of the respondent” — a claim that did not result in refunds to the investors.

The petitioners’ lawyer, Mr Lawrence Owube, told FIJ that the case could not “proceed beyond getting a liquidator to take over the supposed assets of the company because we could not even find it anywhere”.

“They have nothing to recover,” he said. “The company was more or less like a shell company; they have no asset, nothing physical to recover from them.”

-FIJ.