9.6 BILLION FRAUD HITS BENUE AS DANGOTE SHARES GO MISSING

Benue earns N9.6bn from selling 43m units of Dangote shares

BENUE State Government has sold 43 million units of its shares in Dangote Cement at a value of N9.6 billion.
 The government had persistently denied the sale of the shares, warehoused by the Benue Investment Property Company.
  Documents from Elixir Investment Partners, a fund management and advisory firm and the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS), showed that the state has offloaded the 43 million shares.
  Governor Gabriel Suswam had categorically denied that the state’s holding in Dangote Cement was ever put on the market. Speaking to newsmen in Makurdi, he said the shares were still intact and had not been sold to anyone.
  Suswam, who refuted claims that the shares were valued at N20 billion at the stock market, said the state government owned only N43 million shares in the company. He blamed his detractors for peddling such falsehood on the shares.
  However, it was learnt that the shares are being gradually offloaded by the state and this actually started on Friday August 1, 2014 and gathered momentum last month.
  Said to be working on the instructions of the government, Elixir on Tuesday, September 2, 2014, offloaded a significant amount of the shares in 16 transactions which involved the sale of 6,152,127 units, earning N1.35 billion in that single deal. 
  Elixir returned to the market on Wednesday, September 17, when it concluded 11 transactions. The next day, 29 sale transactions were concluded. Similar transactions were conducted on September 19, September 22 and September 23. The biggest single transaction was concluded on Wednesday, September 24 when over nine million units were sold for N2.19 billion.
The document revealed that a total of 29,192,297 units of shares were sold, with the last recorded sale happening on Friday, September 26, 2014.
The implication, according to the analysts, is that the outgoing state government may be aiming to divest its entire investment in the largest cement company in sub-Saharan Africa.
Last Wednesday, Benue chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) staged a protest against the divestment of the over N43 billion shares, saying the action amounts to a major blow to the socio-economic life of the state.
 Addressing journalists, the chairman of CAN in Gboko, Rev. Sam Gar, who led other clerics and worshippers in the protest, lamented the deals and therefore called on all to join the association’s opposition to the sale.
 Gar, who threatened that CAN would be compel to invoke the wrath of God against those behind the deal, appealed to all the political parties as well as their aspirants to take decisive steps to reverse the action or be rejected at the polls.
   In 2010, Dangote Cement Plc bought majority shares in Benue Cement Company (BCC).
   With production capacity totaling 20.3 million tonnes across three Nigerian plants, the company is already in 14 African countries, bringing total capacity to more than 60 million tonnes by 2016.
  Dangote Cement share price closed N212 on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as at close of trading on Friday, while market capitalis    ation was N3.61 trillion.