Buhari Sacks Chike Obi as AMCON boss, appoints Ahmed Kuru

President Muhammadu Buhari has dissolved the Executive Management Team of the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) led by the Managing Director,

 Mr Mustafa Chike Obi, (pictured) and appointed Ahmed Lawan Kuru as the new MD.

Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) was established on the 19th July 2010, when then President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan, signed the AMCON Act into Law.  AMCON was created to be a key stabilizing and re-vitalizing tool established to revive the financial system by efficiently resolving the non-performing loan assets of the banks in the Nigerian economy.

Chike-Obi ran Amcon since it was established in 2010 to buy non-performing loans as banks and the economy of Africa’s biggest crude producer suffered from the oil price crash of 2008 and 2009. It bought more than 12,000 loans from industries including aviation, gasoline marketing and manufacturing for about 1.8 trillion naira ($9 billion).

Amcon managed to collect or reorganize 57 percent of the bad debts it took on at a rate of 107 percent what it paid for them, Chike-Obi said in May. While that was above the agency’s overall recovery target of 80 percent, the remaining loans would be harder to fix, he said.

See below press statement from the presidency made available to elombah.com this evening.

STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE – PRESIDENT BUHARI APPROVES APPOINTMENT OF NEW AMCON MD & EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the dissolution of the Executive Management Team of the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).

President Buhari has also approved the reconstitution of the management team of the corporation as follows:

·       Ahmed Lawan Kuru                  –       Managing Director

·       Kola Ayeye                             –        Executive Director

·       Eberechukwu Uneze                –        Executive Director

·       Aminu Ismail                          –        Executive Director

Until his appointment today as Managing Director of AMCON, Mr. Ahmed Kuru was the Group Managing Director of Enterprise Bank Limited.

He started his banking career with the old Habib Bank in 1985 and rose through the ranks to become an Executive Director of Bank PHB (now Keystone Bank) in 2005.

The appointment of Mr. Kuru and the three new AMCON Executive Directors is with effect from today, August 18, 2015.

Femi Adesina

Special Adviser to the President

(Media & Publicity)

August 18, 2015