The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), has reiterated its full support for its Asset Management Partners (AMPs), in the pursuit to recover the 20 per cent or N740billion of the total N3.7trillion Eligible Bank Assets (EBAs) portfolio that are in the hands of obligors.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Ahmed Lawan Kuru, made the declaration in Lagos, at the 2018 edition of the AMCON/AMPs Feedback session, which ended on Wednesday. AMPs are firms AMCON engaged in 2016 to complement its recovery efforts as part of its renewed strategy to resolve some 6,000 accounts within its portfolio of accounts.
Kuru, who was represented by the Group Head, Enforcements, AMCON, Aliyu Kalgo, while declaring the two-day event open, said the Corporation placed equal importance on the ability of the partners to recover the outsourced accounts because their efforts count towards the achievement of AMCON’s core mandate.He also urged the APMs to discharge their assignments within the defined rules of engagement as stipulated by the AMCON Act, and as seasoned professionals.
Kuru said: “It is a well-known fact that AMCON has a unique and limited mandate; therefore, AMCON must maximise every opportunity to state its cases with the highest quality of representation.
“This was why we came up with the AMP programme that has been of tremendous development in our efforts to recover debts owed the country by a few individuals, who have over the years remained recalcitrant. We are very grateful for all the AMPs who work with us towards achieving our recovery mandate. We are mindful of the enormous responsibility placed on you in this regard.” he assured.
On AMCON’s plans to ensure that AMPs’ experience a hitch-free recovery processes, Kuru, noted that these debts when recovered would go a long way in boosting Nigeria’s economy.He added, “We will continue to emphasise the need for more diligence even as we continue to partner with you. In the future, we will enlist AMPs who have made significant recoveries as part of the facilitators for similar events so that they will share some insights and critical success factors with us as well as their colleagues. If the recovery process was easy and straight forward we would not have engaged you in the first instance. We therefore recognise the fact that it is a challenging assignment, and that is why we selected you.
We promise to be with you all through the hardship and together we shall succeed.”Also speaking, a lawyer, Chuka Agbu, urged the AMPs to explore and apply their special powers as provided by the AMCON Act in their pursuit of these recalcitrant debtors of the corporation.
The senior advocate further advised the AMPs to leverage the major provisions of the AMCON Act such as bankruptcy, receivership, asset tracing amongst others in their quest to track down the obligors, and eventually compel them to repay their obligations.
