AMCON, Capital Oil’s Talks Collapse

The talks between Capital Oil and Gas Industries Ltd and Assets Management Company Ltd (AMCON) have collapsed.

Spokesman of Capital Oil, Mr. Nick Hayes, said this mean plans by the company to re-open its depots in Lagos and other parts of the country have failed.

He said: “The implication of this is a crisis situation ahead, in regards to the shortage of fuel otherwise known as premium motor spirit (PMS), currently being witnessed across major cities in the country.”

Providing insights into what led to the collapse of talks barely 48 hours after Capital Oil and Gas said it was satisfied with discussions with AMCON, the spokesman blamed it on “inordinate ambition of some forces to take over the running of affairs in the company wholesale.”

In a statement yesterday, Hayes said: “It has now become very obvious that there is a grand design by some very ambitions people to capture the entire business concern and run it as if they set it up in the first instance.

“These people are the ones pushing AMCON to bring very unacceptable conditions to the negotiating table. Their whole plot is to ensure that there is no amicable settlement and in that way, AMCON can do their bidding which simply is, to take over the running of the affairs of the company.”

He said when Capital Oil sensed the personal interest, it backed out of the settlement plan electing instead to head back to the courts.

Hayes added: “Another issue that led to the disagreement by both parties we learnt, is the appointment of an Administrator to oversee the company. AMCON is understood to favour the appointment of an administrator who shall have sweeping powers. Expectedly, top Management of Capital Oil and Gas kicked against the move which they say will give such an Administrator the authority to throw out thousands of Nigerian youths in the employ of the company presently, in favour of those the Administrator may want to bring in. Mr. Hayes hinted that this is one issue that hurt the MD/CEO of Capital Oil and Gas, Chief Ifeanyi Ubah, who has always been on the side of the youths as far as employment is concerned.

“He then warned that if AMCON is not stopped from playing politics with the country’s economy as they are presently doing, what happened in January when Nigerians took to the streets in protest against the removal of subsidy on oil, may be a child’s play to the chaos that will ensure when fuel finally dries out of filling stations nationwide.”