By Adebowale Johnson
The business relationship between two partners, Took Trading Company, an offshore support services company, and Century Group, owners of Century Energy, has recently gone sour over alleged N20 million debt owed by the latter.
This was displayed when Took’s workers organised a protest at the premises of Century Group, Lagos, displaying placards with the different inscriptions, such as, “Century Energy stop the corporate bullying”, “We have waited for long”, and “Pay us our money”, among others. The staff alleged that Century Energy owed their company more than N20 million and caused non-payment of their salaries.
One of the protesters, who gave his name as Chikezie, said: “I have not been paid since November because my company supplied the company but they have not paid us.”
Chief executive officer of Took Trading, Mr. Toju Okoro, while addressing journalists, said he was aware of the protest, admitting that he had not been able to pay his staff because money for supplies made to Century Energy had not been paid.
Okoro noted that his company supplied 125,000 litres of AGO to Century Energy, to the tune of N36,259,500 since November, regretting that, after the initial payment of N15,740,000, nothing had been heard of the balance. He said many correspondences had been sent to Century Energy for the balance, all to no avail, noting that the hardship the oil services company had put his firm through warranted the protest by his staff.
Responding, Mr. Ayebatari Wilson, head of procurement, Century Energy, under whose office the deal was transacted, admitted that his company was indebted to Took Trading but blamed the delay on the slow response from their own client, who should have paid them for them to also pay Took Trading.
“Century has not said it is not going to pay. Century is also being owed by other clients.
“We do the contracting on behalf of the vendor. When the client does not pay, it becomes an issue between us and the vendor.
“We are a big company, so we cannot go to our client’s office with placards as they have done now because we are looking at the relationship.
“I understand Toju because he is not a big businessman like Century, so any little money tied up is like tying up his capital, I understand this.
“The problem is that they have told Mr. Toju that they have paid us. They have not paid us completely and we have been going back and forth with them. Unfortunately, it is not only Took Trading but there are also other vendors like that and they are agitating. Century should have carried placards to clients to pay us our money but we cannot do that; they are smaller and we can understand why they have to do that.
“There is an arrangement to settle the debt but I don’t want to discuss it right now; when we meet him, we will tell him the arrangement on the ground to settle this.
“I have told Toju on a friendly note to be calm because we are seriously working on how we can force the clients to settle us but then I understand his position,” he said.