NLC, Kriton Lally housing crisis gets messier

What began as a laudable housing arrangement between the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Kriston Lally EPC Nigeria Limited, a private property developer to build affordable housing estates for Nigerian workers in all the 36 states including the FCT has gone sour as subscribers to the housing deal are crying foul over non remittance of […]

What began as a laudable housing arrangement between the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Kriston Lally EPC Nigeria Limited, a private property developer to build affordable housing estates for Nigerian workers in all the 36 states including the FCT has gone sour as subscribers to the housing deal are crying foul over non remittance of the money they paid to own houses in the failed deal.
Outgoing  NLC president,  Abdulwaheed Omar before the housing deal failed,  had described the collaboration of NLC with Kriston Lally EPC Nigeria Limited as part of efforts  to ensure a good number of the labour members have decent roofs over their heads.
An agreement which brought the housing projects into reality was signed on April 6, 2013 by Deputy President of the NLC Mr. Promise Adewusi, and the Group Managing Director of Kriston Lally, Mr Mustapha Madawaki.
 Speaking on the partnership Omar said, “On the issue of housing, we are very serious about it and before we leave office we hope to see that quite a number of workers would have gotten shelter. The most important thing is that we would have laid a foundation whereby on continuous basis, Nigerian workers will continue to get houses in a very easy way by just depositing 10 percent and then get a house that they will continue to pay for over a period of time.”
Speaking on the benefits of the project to workers, Omar said, “You know that the moment you are able to get land, you have removed a substantial part of the cost of the house and then with this kind of arrangement where somebody will just pay 10 percent and then subsequently when you get the house you start paying the balance over a period of time.” December 2014 was delivery date promised subscribers.
Madawaki assured that the NLC and Kriston Lally had done everything to ensure that Nigerian workers, especially those who subscribed for the first phase get their houses as scheduled. Madawaki said, “In practical term, we are ready. We have cleared our sites. We have imported block making factory. It is already in Abuja. We have mobilised virtually all our staff that are supposed to be on sites and our sub-contractors are all sensitized and ready.”
He added, “The…deadline is not going to suffer, because if you look at the pilot study which is the first phase, we are only concentrating on 5,000 houses in Abuja. It is the second phase that will involve Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Lagos, Imo State and Adamawa and that will be huge number.”
However, despite all the assurances by both the NLC and Kriston Lally that all was well in their partnership, the project did not come to fruition. Workers therefore demanded refund of their stakes. This too became a knotty issue.
The developer went public alleging that NLC is after all working to frustrate its efforts to refund the about 3,800 workers that paid for the houses. The Managing Director of Kriston Lally, Madawaki  decried the NLC’s insistence to superintend the refund process  even as  he indicated  his company’s readiness to refund subscribers’ money noting that it has set up a unit in his office to facilitate the process.
He alleged that the insistence of NLC to relocate the refund unit in his office to Labour House, NLC’s headquarters was contrived to migrate subscribers to a new platform. He explained, “NLC insists that the refund unit should be moved to their secretariat, why? Simple, if subscribers are issued their cheques from our offices, they may head straight to their banks and the new platform sponsored by NLC leadership will certainly fail.
“Therefore, they feel they must control these funds and the subscribers in order to migrate them to their arranged but illegal platform. This platform, apart from lacking in legitimacy, also lacks the resources to carry out this project.”
Madawaki said an understanding was reached to proceed with refund process only for NLC to turn around to insist that it wants the whole money transferred to either NLC account or the new platform, which both DSS and Kriston Lally rejected.
He alleged that the General Secretary of NLC, Dr Peter Oszo-Eson requested that the entire subscriber’s files be moved from Kriston Lally’s office to his office which was also rejected.
He said, “After a careful consideration of NLC’s continuous mischief, we decided that we’ll seek justice from a court of competent jurisdiction and further asked the court to appoint an independent body to distribute subscribers’ funds back to them.
“We can no longer trust NLC since the president went on air and told the nation that he was not aware of the interest that accrued on the subscribers’ deposit when there are documents to prove same. This account must have generated close to N200 million. They may have also included fictitious names to cover up the interest, thus jeopardizing the safety of subscribers’ funds,” he claimed.
While denying being on the run, Madawaki said he had to adopt a survival strategy when he noticed his firm’s lines were tapped which was unhealthy for both safety and planning purposes. He added that “Our offices were ransacked and all our equipment taken away by DSS thereby making operations also difficult. Almost all our staffers were subjected to constant harassments from various parties and we could therefore not feel safe to operate. In any case, our administrative staff are very much available and reachable and the NLC knows that.”
He assured that the refund process will commence as soon as the Federal High Court makes a pronouncement on the setting up of a third party to supervise the refund process.
Omar described the accusation of the developer of NLC trying to divert the subscribers’ money to an account as unfortunate and uncalled for.
 He said “First, I think the way this man is treated, maybe the way he is allowed by the security agencies have contributed. Maybe, we also contributed by not hitting him hard on this issue of forgery but I told you our reason is that we want to make sure that workers’ money is released to them. Then we are going to face him squarely because any attempt to  get him jailed will scuttle this issue of refund because once you are in court, you have to stop until the process is through and we don’t want that because that will amount to continuous suffering of workers who paid in this  money.”
 Omar added, “He is trying to compound this problem because he has a lot of things underground; I said earlier on that our advert jointly with him was that workers, come and subscribe for this house, pay your money into NLC-Kriston Lally EPC in Zenith Bank with the account number.”
 Omar accused the developer of deceiving the workers that subscribed to the housing estate to pay into another bank account operated by him despite the directive from the union stopping him from further collection of money from them because he had not performed up to expectation in the housing deal.
 He said “by October, we had reason to write him and say, ‘stop collection, concentrate and service these people’ which he acknowledged but we didn’t know that when people continued going there, he started telling them, ‘look, that account is closed but I can give  you another account. Sometimes when they came, he said, ‘okay, it is closed but go and do me bank draft.’ You know clearly that that was a dubious plan. Even if it is NLC that tells you that ‘okay, we can provide an alternative’ you have to think twice, not to talk of somebody else. The man was able to deceive a lot of people.”