₦airaland Forum

Recall I had detailed my unpleasant experience with Bank of Industry in a post on this link; https://www.nairaland.com/4371169/nairalanders-experience-bank-industry-documents

24 hours later, the branch manager for the bank's Makurdi office contacted me on WhatsApp basically expressing displeasure that I took my grievance to Nairaland and informing me that that the Bank's management had been notified of my post on Nairaland. The conversations made me pause in carrying out my resolve to publicize and protest my ill treatment at BOI for a time.

Today, I received a 31 minutes call from Bank of Industry customer care. The customer care personnel apologized on behalf of the bank, inquired if I made a formal complaint to the bank and went on to explain a number of issues including what the 10% guarantee was...

I made it clear I understood those and even though I would have suggested the bank reviewed that requirement if the bank asked my opinion, that wasn't the point. The point was that I was made to pay a 1% non refundable appraisal fee and the bank went to sleep until my letter lapsed. We had plenty back and forth and I asked her how she would have me proceed? She said since the application can be renewed, I should visit the bank and talk with the manager. I asked if I could get a mail that summarizes our conversations and she gave me a categorical no. That I did not do a formal complaint so there can't be a formal reply. Fair! I thought.
Even though I am yet to decide if I plan to visit the MKD office at this point. I thought I should provide this update so that;
1) I can keep you informed about what has happened after the post and what may happen after now.
2) Sample opinions on how to proceed.
3) Provide 1st hand reference for the public on BOI with how this ultimately ends.

dominique , FOD , puskin ,naijacutee, laudableXX, denee

LaudableXX:
It would have cost him far less to power the streets with a gas generator, instead of using diesel.

lol
Our leaders simply throw caution to the winds when the steal from us knowing the most we can do will be to rant.

LaudableXX:
It would have cost him far less to power the streets with a gas generator, instead of using diesel.

lol
Our leaders simply throw caution to the winds when the steal from us knowing the most we can do will be to rant.

Very empirical and scientific call out.
Ambode has a lot of explaining to do to Lagosians who put him in office

In another thread, I stated that;

This makes zero sense and to think its coming from Ambode breaks my heart.
How can anybody spend 12 billion naira in 1 year to power 31,500 street light when with readily available solar energy solutions, 40-60,000 naira will power a street light for over a decade bringing total to less than 2 billion.

How history repeats!

This makes zero sense and to think its coming from Ambode breaks my heart.
How can anybody spend 12 billion naira in 1 year to power 31,500 street light when with readily available solar energy solutions, 40-60,000 naira will power a street light for over a decade bringing total to less than 2 billion.
So why

There is a leadership conspiracy to rape and rob Nigeria of hope. That is the only reason why Fashola after 3 years as minister of power will be seeking untenable explanations for why we are where we are.

aragon4realz:
don't believe everything you see...the first pic is probably the mom to the girl on the right

I could bet on this if I were a betting man

edoman2016:
I agree with you. Nigerians are bad borrowers, most especially men. There is no doubt Bank of Industry is a reputable bank. My problem with your bank is that it is slow and complex in loan application process but it can be improved upon. You guys are doing a good job to the real sector of Nigerian economy.

Your assertion about Nigerians is to say the least both bogus and baseless. Without the right systems, creditors everywhere will always risk losing their money.

What we are saying is that it is unacceptable for BOI to arbitrarily approve loans it has no intention or capacity to disburse, collect 1% non refundable appraisal fee and go to sleep until the offer letter lapses. In 2012 when I got a loan from 1st bank, the day I received my offer letter was the day my account was credited. Why will BOI give an offer letter and fail to disburse 6 months afterwards?

Nigerians must demand probity and responsibility from BOI. It is after all our bank and our money. Those in the bank's employ aren't doing us any favor by doing the job they were employed to do.

Nigeria's biggest problem as pointed out is leadership failure.
I hope we get the leadership factor right in 2019, then we can begin to restructure our systems to function well. Then and only then can we truly be on our way to becoming the giant of Africa.

While he is at it, all right thinking Nigerians of goodwill are tirelessly working at sending him back to Daura soonest.

Happy birthday Pastor Adeboye
May God teach you to number your remaining days and apply your heart to wisdom

BluntBoy:
It doesn't mean that he is a Christian. I love Jesus Christ and I am not ashamed to identify with Him and yet I hate being labeled a Christian.

Anybody who is in Christ like FRZ alleges his movement is cannot but be a Christian. Whether s/he likes the label or not is immaterial.

Sikiratu:
He does not claim to b a Christian, so u can pardon his un Christ like attitude. But how do u qualify the un christ like attitude of professed man of God??

Could he b a thorn in d flesh for d Church??
If he is, then d Church should stop focusing on d thorn, and start focusing on God...... Coz t was on that singular reason that God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh.

FRZ will beg to disagree with you if you hold that he does not claim to be a Christian because even in this his post, he states; "We are the #FreeNation in Christ, unlike many other ‘brands’ we are not ashamed to identify with Jesus! ~FRZ"

This guy is always criticizing and insulting pastors over everything, yet he abused and drove out his wife and children and is living with another man's wife. These are only a few of the many unchristlike things about him so I wonder where he gets his moral justification from.

Edited:
All of you quoting and insulting me as if your lives depend on it, hear what Jesus said:
Matthew 7:3-5 New International Version (NIV)
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

You cannot make it your life goal to criticize pastors when you are worse off.

Our government lies about everything not just Boko Haram

I find it very annoying when occupants of respectable government offices make such ill-informed and illogical statements.

Is cow business tantamount to government business? Why should government bear the responsibility of building ranches for cows? Will the same government also build pens for pig rearers and shops for spare parts dealers and drinking parlors for liquor merchants?

How can any right thinking individual in this same country where I buy fuel at twice the pump price, pay taxes through my nose and still be expected to bribe when I require tax clearance certificate, produce and generate my own electricity, water and road, etc ask government to take on the responsibility of building ranches for cows?

If you are this clueless as to what to do or say as a government official, the honorable thing to do is resign!

LaudableXX:
You are the one that needs a clearer understanding of how BOI operates, and how intervention funding is supposed to work. Did you read his post properly, before you even passed your comments? Of what use is 'intervention funding,' if such funds are never released to the applicants or prospective beneficiaries, who have actually qualified for it?

Or didn't you see this part, in his post or you just chose to deliberately ignore it, in order to make your snide remarks? kindly pay particular attention, to the portions highlighted in bold type.

A number of these comments are from BOI staff members or consultants who are beneficiaries of the scam so it will be asking for too much if you expect objectivity.

G8Arthur:
God bless you my brother for sharing your experience . I have not gone as far as u have with BOI but from what I am experiencing now, I feel that I will withdraw.
U can approach a lawyer for advice on how to, if posible withdraw ur commitment if u do not trust them.
This is my guess, you are also free to investigate and proof me wrong. BOI is n ot a Govt agency. It's called BOI limited. Some elites that have money made it look like it's govt establisment. They are just crafty.
With all the green colour and the rest u think is nigeria government owned.

The bank was established with an authorized share capital of $400Million. Shareholders at creation are made of Ministry of Finance (59.4%), Central Bank of Nigeria (40.36%) and private sector take the balance.

Wikipedia

deenee:
I have read both and even the comments from others and this is my final conclusion. The op didn't do his own due diligence before applying for the loan because everything he has complained about is on the boi website. They have stated it clearly that they won't give direct cash but rather pay directly to suppliers and the fees he is complaining about are also clearly stated on their website so it funny that he is complaining about it.

If you have truly read my posts like someone suggested then I am at a loss how you came to your submissions. My grouse here is not that BOI isn't giving me cash. I processed my application without enlisting the assistance of any consultant and yet it got approval so that should at least tell you that I did my research.
My grouse is that BOI armtwisted a non refundable payment of 52000 naira from me and then went to sleep until the letter lapsed. Right now, they are probably waiting for me to go to their office cap in hand begging them to renew the offer which will eventually still lapse again.
Apart from the fact that I missed a window of opportunity due to that delay, prices of my inputs are not what they were 2 months ago. We were buying 2000 units of an input in Dec at 2.4 Million naira, today it is 2.8 Million naira.
These are the issues not giving me cash or not

deenee:
While I understand your grievance trying to give boi a bad name and by extension the fgn won't solve the issue. Bt if that is the route you want to take then all the best after all you are the one trying to build a business and it won't be advisable to tarnish your business name by trying to fight them . It's a battle you can't win either in real life or no social media. Rather I suggest you do your proper due diligence next time before applying for any loan and ask for a checklist of the requirements and make sure you have everything on hand before you apply. Again I am not holding fort for boi but I know of countless people and small business owners who have applied for loans from the same boi, got the loans without paying a single bribe or even knowing anybody at boi and yeah there is no way they will disburse if you don't sort out the collateral/ security for the loan because they are not a charity organization.

What then will you say about this independent opinion which I just stumbled across:


"There is massive corruption in the Federal government's Bank of Industry (BoI). The fraud runs into billions of naira. The Bank not only trades with cheap government funds meant to support industries and industrial development in Nigeria, it is also defrauding Nigerian industrialists of their hard earned earnings.
If in doubt, the federal government should direct its public service monitoring agency, the Servicom, to ask for a comprehensive listing of all loan applications approved by the BoI and see what percentage of the supposed loan approvals for industries, were ever disbursed within even six months. It should be noted that these are businesses which are qualified and have been duly adjudged, so by the Bank, which goes ahead to collect as much as 14% of the approved loans in upfront cash, but never disburses for as long as two years, without any reasons.
What is worse, is that apart from funds from the federal government through the Central Bank, the BoI is also collecting billions of naira from state governments across the country, for partnership funding for business expansion for small-scale industries in the states and for years, not a dime of such funds are disbursed to any intended beneficiary. The pertinent question may be, who is benefiting from the difference between the five to 10% supposed interest rates to SMEs and the 25% to 35% interest rate commercial Banks are apparently rationing out the funds meant for long term investments for hundreds of businesses, as massive short term loans, to a handful of traders and importers of finished goods.
As a result of this large scale development banking fraud, the economic recovery projections of the government will always be wide off mark. Virtually all federal government ministries and the government's economic indices monitoring agencies, will be basing their economic growth projections on funds already given to the BoI, without knowing that such funds are never released to intended beneficiaries for years.
There are reasons to believe the Central Bank is probably complicit in this evil. The government will be shocked at what will be discovered if it opens up a web portal for example, for disappointed Nigerian businesses, to forward proof of BoI's failure. Such disappointed small, medium or large-scale industrialists should be asked to also detail how much they have paid into special BoI accounts for years, without getting any loans. Yet a chunk of the payments BoI collects from loan-seeking industrialists are non-refundable. The refundable part of the deposits the BoI is fraudulently collecting, are refunded after upwards of two years at less than 10% interest per annum, when even Bank to Bank lending in Nigeria, is at almost 20% for onward lending to end users at as high as 35%.
To be fair, this fraudulent way has probably been the way the BoI had always being doing business. That much is obvious when it is realised that the bank, despite its very low customer base, the Bank had always been competing with major commercial banks in the profits it has been declaring for the past several years."

O'seun Ogunseitan
http://www.itrealms.com.ng/2017/11/bank-of-industry-and-fraud-within.html?m=1

It is about beaming the public search light on the massive corruption being carried out with reckless abandon at BOI. Nothing else.

higherpower:
Nothing much wanted to robb minds. My own case is pathetic. They are just tossing me up-and-down

Reach me on salonfenaturale@gmail.com
Thanks

Nowenuse:
Don't worry bro. God will replenish whatever it seems you must have lost in these procedures. It's so frustrating after spending all your time, efforts and hopes and it ends up like this.
Kudos for taking your time to share your experiences with us, at least, none of us will fall for this in the future after reading this.

I have had a previous experience like yours, albeit with a micro-finance bank. It was so terrible that these people wasted my 6 months of constantly transporting from their head to branch offices, providing all the necessary documents, providing guarantors etc, all to no avail. It was always from one story to another. At last, I just gave up on them.

I strongly believe we will get to the top one way or another and all these terrible experiences will be stories for us to tell our younger generations of how we overcame in spite of all the oppositions.

Thank you very much

While I have no plans as of this moment to take legal action, I plan to share my experience on every platform and hope Nigerians broadcast it until everyone knows what fraud BOI and by extension the federal government of Nigeria is.

* concluding part of my post

POST OFFER LETTER EVENTS
Following the receipt of the offer letter, I was made to write and submit a letter of loan acceptance, a letter of undertaking to pay interest during moratorium and a letter of attestation from my solicitors indicating that I understood everything I had signed and accented to. I was made to sign several copies of a 20 paged loan agreement and to resubmit forms to my guarantors to sign and submit and also swear affidavits in court. All of these we did and submitted before the 6th of November, 2017.
I then inquired to know how events were to proceed there from. I was told my four suppliers in Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos will be verified, thereafter I will be required to pay the 10% deposit and then the suppliers will get letters of credit to supply. I raised the need for all these to happen before December, 31st 2017 as it would position my business advantageously in the market place and they gave me all the assurances that they will make that happen and asked me to go and try to raise the 10% security so I could pay once the account was opened in BOI MFB. I said even though that was going to be a problem as I had no prior knowledge, I was going to try and even borrow at interest if I had to but since that was meant to happen after they had finished verifying my suppliers, the onus was on BOI to do the verifications first, then I will be provided bank details into which to pay the 10% security. That was how we parted that 6th November, 2017.
All through December, 2017, I was in touch with my suppliers some of whom had done repeat business with BOI in the past but who expressed so much unwillingness to deal on BOI’s terms and it was so difficult for me to understand why anyone will so distrust a government agency that much. Now I know better. I was worried that throughout December, 2017, not a single one of my suppliers had been contacted nor verified and I kept contacting BOI’s office and reminding them of the lapsing timeframe but nothing I heard showed any commitment. At some point, I wondered if Bank of Industry was not a government ploy to get struggling and already disadvantaged entrepreneurs like me who provided their own road, electricity, water, etc to part with money they did not have in the guise of nonrefundable fees. Because it looked as if the bank’s interest and sole mandate was getting me to pay that Fifty Two Thousand Naira (N52, 000.00) non refundable fee which they had succeeded at and which was why nobody was doing anything anymore now that the money had been paid.
That was how 1 month, 2 months and 3 months elapsed with some of my suppliers still not contacted nor verified. Up until this moment, the bank has not felt the need to reach me about anything after all, I can’t sue the bank neither has the bank lost anything. If anything, it has gained my Fifty Two Thousand Naira (N52, 000.00) non refundable fee. The ultimate loser here is poor me and I can go to hell for all the bank cares. This is my experience with Nigeria’s Bank of Industry and I hope you take it into consideration when next you consider taking the government of Nigeria or any of her agencies serious.

Henrysat:
As a staff of the Bank, I can assure you that if indeed you've been dealing with the Bank all you need to get this issue resolved is a call to the customer care unit. No staff of the Bank is allowed to collect a penny from you until you accept the offer letter. Kindly drop your complaint with the customer unit 07002255264/customercare@boi.ng

Thank you but you should I contacted these same contacts and they referred me back to my loan officer

tunjibadosnen:
govt loans are like that, they pay in kind for all materials needed by you rather than giving you the money in cash, so if you have inflated cost of materials in your quotation thinking they will give you the cash you're on your own

To be clear, I have no issues with this at all

higherpower:
A bank whose duty is to help turned around to put outrageous measures and u call that conditions? In my own case, they kept turning me up-and-down. First they said my collateral didn't have CofO. Later they asked me to get 2 external guarantors of Dr, Bar or level 12 civil servants. When I got them, they now said they must have net worth of the amount I applied for. How can young graduates who just started working n wants to assist have such net worth property?

I scaled all the above conditions. What was pending was the 10% security which was to be paid after verification of my suppliers. That verification is yet to be complete months after the letter lapsed.

higherpower:
OP, Please can I speak to you on phone?

Provide your number and I will call you or state the agenda and I could provide an email

DrUche3:
It's better to read the post well.

Thank you sir

edoman2016:
Is your business a start-up or existing business? And what is your business into?

Existing
Agriculture

superior1:
Before we blame the credit officer who worked on your document, we need a copy of the proposal/business feasibilty you submitted alongside your application

Whatever the proposal/business feasibility I submitted, it was reviewed by various staff of the bank at different levels and judged feasible before my application got approved so I don't see how a presentation of my business plan to you changes anything