Sometime in June 2011, my then ailing husband discovered several acts of mismanagement of the company and financial misconduct of an embarrassingly large magnitude by Mr. Goodie Ibru, whereupon he, then also a director of Ikeja Hotel Plc, promptly requested that Mr. Goodie Ibru resigns as Chairman. At the time, Goodie Ibru had been Chairman of the company for 27years, even though my husband’s investment companies owned shares in Ikeja Hotel Plc. amounting to four times the value of shares that Goodie Ibru owned in the company. I also know that Dr. Oba Otudeko CFR and Bank of Industry hold, and have at all time held, individually more shares in the company than Mr. Goodie Ibru.
Mr. Goodie Ibru refused to resign and instead declared WAR on my then severely ailing husband to the extent that he refused our first son Toke, to act as my husband’s alternate on the Board of a sister company, Capital Hotels Plc. (Sheraton Abuja annex 1) and promptly walked him out of the said board meeting to the embarrassment of all who attended, while simultaneously sacking his brother-in-law (who was also representing my late husband’s interest) from the board.
My husband was also pained by these and other acts of Mr. Goodie Ibru, brutally directed against his interests in these companies, especially at a time when he was terminally ill, that not wanting any further relationship with Goodie, he promptly called in his loans to Mr. Goodie Ibru (as a person) and the companies of which he was chairman, removed him as executor of his estate and barred him and some of his other siblings who he had also discovered were actively in cahoots with Goodie Ibru, from having anything to do with his funeral.
He also instructed that we commence the process of seeking redress for Goodie’s wrongs to him, the companies and the wider interest of other shareholders, whereupon we did write a petition to the EFCC to investigate the management of Ikeja Hotel Plc. and identify the problems and the offenders, as we are not willing to be answerable for any of the financial or other misconducts of Mr. Goodie Ibru against the interest of the investing public, under a mistaken public perception that his acts are also our acts as members of the Ibru family. It is certainly not in the interest of the wider Ibru family to be seen as a family that appropriates what belong to others.
Since being aware of our discoveries, Goodie Ibru has simply made all efforts to conceal them from the public, under the guise of the matter being a family matter, and has to the bewilderment of the EFCC, attempted to frustrate since 2013 their investigation by saying that the family is settling the matter.
The resolutions which were passed in the EGM of January 6th 2015 were mainly those authorizing the appointment of auditors to conduct a forensic audit on the management of the company and the procurement of the company’s shares? Why should these basic resolutions trouble Mr. Goodie Ibru so much, to the desperate extent that:
He had tried to frustrate the holding of the EGM on the excuse that his sisters had merely filed a petition seeking to stop the EGM – an approach rejected by members of the board of directors who held majority shares, but in spite of which he yet wrote to us seeking to abort the EGM.
He had having failed to get the Board of Directors to support his attempt to frustrate the holding of the EGM, yet instructed the secretary of the company (and registrars of the company) not to attend the EGM.
He had pretended, and continues to pretend, as if he is unaware that we had obtained and served on the company, an order of the Federal High Court on the 6th of December 2014 (before his sisters own purported injunction was obtained), declaring that the EGM was validly requisitioned and ordering the secretary and registrars of the company to attend the meeting?
He had caused his sisters to file two suits in Lagos seeking an injunction, only to, during the pendency of these applications, sneak to an Abuja Federal High Court (even though his sisters and 7 out of the 9 respondents live and operate from Lagos) to obtain exparte injunction restraining the EGM, which order has not been served on me and any of the companies which requisitioned the EGM up till now. I challenge him to tell us what was really wrong with the Federal High Court, Lagos?