PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Doyin Okupe has been dragged to court by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) over an unpaid debt of N34m (£109,000) claiming that he took out the loan in 2000 and is yet to repay it.

In a suit filed before a Federal High Court in Lagos, the NDIC is claiming that Dr Okupe and two others took out the loan to facilitate a contract to supply the Bayelsa State government with 10,000 tonnes of imported rice. Dr Okupe’s co-respondents in the suit filed by the NDIC before Justice Saliu Saidu are Value Trust Investment and its director Ray Ahazie.

NDIC had initially instituted the action in 2007 to recover the alleged debt being the outstanding of a loan facility obtained by the respondents from Gulf Bank in October 2000. According to its lawyer Abiodun Layonu, although the said rice was successfully imported on December 28, 2000, the ship was unable to berth at the Apapa Port in Lagos until January 3, 2001 because the port was then congested.

According to the corporation, when the ship arrived at Port Harcourt on July 26, 2001, an unpaid agency fee in the sum of $155,000 prevented it from berthing. It said this delay in the delivery of the bags of rice led to some becoming caked and some becoming stained.

As a result, the Bayelsa State government was said to have refused to take delivery of the rice, following which Gulf Bank was forced to commence an open market sale of the goods and in the process discovering that a good number of the bags of rice were spoilt. Following the public auction, the bank was only able to recoup N454,574,150 of the loan advanced to the defendants leaving an outstanding sum of N70,425,850.

This outstanding sum was said to have been attracting interest since 2001 and the matter was referred to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in September 2005 where the sum of N196,642, 996 of the debt with interest was waived, leaving only an outstanding of N44m. However, the NDIC claimed that following the waiver, the defendants were able to pay only N10m out of the N44m bringing the debt down to N34m.

Since then the defendants were said to have abandoned the debt or refused to liquidate it and the NDIC in its suit is seeking to reclaim the indebted sum with 21% interest per annum till it is finally liquidated. It also wants the court to put the cost of instituting the legal action on the defendants.