Oil and gas tycoon Adewale Tinubu settles legal scores with Nigeria’s SEC

After nearly two years of legal disputes, Nigerian energy tycoon Adewale (Wale) Tinubu’s oil and gas company, Oando Plc, is making peace with Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the overriding interest* of its shareholders and the capital market.

As part of its settlement with the SEC, Oando has agreed to pay all the monetary penalties stipulated in an SEC letter dated May 31, 2019, as well as to improve its corporate governance.

Earlier, the regulator found Oando guilty of serious infractions. Alongside the Nigerian Exchange Group (NXG), the SEC launched an inquiry into a heated shareholder dispute inside the company. Allegations had surfaced regarding insider dealings at Oando, while a Deloitte & Touche forensic audit suggested corporate governance lapses, internal control failure, management compromise and oversight abuse.

As a result, in 2019, the SEC barred several of its board members, including Tinubu, its CEO, and Mofe Boyo, its deputy CEO, from sitting on the boards of public companies for five years, a move that impacted the holding of the company’s annual general meeting. Some of the company’s directors were not allowed to attend the yearly meeting, as the SEC had appointed an interim board.

Following the embargo, a number of the company’s affected directors challenged the SEC’s order in a series of lawsuits in the Federal High Court. Since 2019, the parties have been fighting each other in the court.

Oando subsequently approached the SEC to negotiate a settlement to reconcile their differences due to the impact that a prolonged litigation would have on the company.

This is not the first time Oando has been embroiled in scandal.

In 2018, the London Court of International Arbitration compelled Tinubu and Boyo to pay $680 million to Ansbury Investment Inc. as a settlement in financial management and shareholding dispute in Oando.

Oando is a Nigerian multinational energy company in the upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas sectors. It is dual-listed on the NXG and Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

*Overriding interests are interests to which a registered title is subject, even though they do not appear in the register. Though not expressly stated in a register, they are binding on the parties involved.