By Our Reporter
The publisher of Orient Daily newspaper, Mr. Godwin Chukwunaenye Ezeemo, has served eviction notices to staff of the company resident at its Charity Estate premises in Awka, the Anambra state capital.
Ezeemo is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Orient Magazine, Newspaper & Communication Limited (OMNCL), promoters of Orient Daily, Orient Energy and Omega FM.
The serial Anambra state governorship aspirant and candidate, variously under the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, the All Progressives Congress, APC, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) employed the services of an Onitsha-based lawyer, Uju Ikena, of Pax-Christi Chambers for the purpose.
Our correspondent gathered that the notice, dated May 31, 2023, was first seen by the staffers on June 30, 2023 when it was splashed all over the premises. That notice, issued in spite of salary arrears and entitlements incurred over varying periods, was said to have left the staff bemused as the publisher only told them, in October 2021, that he had decided that, in his own words, “the staff and publications should go into hibernation” to allow him source funds to clear the salary arrears and get materials to continue.
The salary arrears and entitlements are thought to be for about a minimum of 14 or more months due.
The notice, according to inside sources, was issued barely three weeks after the same lawyer showed up at a meeting of residents of the premises and introduced herself as a solicitor for Ezeemo. She then directed the distraught staff members and his other tenants to come forward with evidence of rent and electricity bill payments at a future meeting.
According to a source who attended the meeting, “The lawyer made it known to us that Ezeemo was no longer interested in hearing that we are Orient Staff; that all he wanted were tenants who would be capable of paying the new rent. She said the man wanted only such tenants to remain while those that could not pay to pack out. She said Ezeemo told her that he was not owing anybody,” the source who craved anonymity disclosed.
“We were still waiting for the lawyer to come for the rescheduled meeting when we saw the quit notice splashed everywhere, with 10 days to the expiration of the purported notice,” the source added.
Anambra Daily learnt that the crisis in the running of the outfit got to a head early 2021 following frustrating months-long salary crisis, flagrant breach of employment contracts through lack of working tools and equipment by the management and that this resulted in a spate of resignations by editorial, marketing and commercial printing staff members. There were spirited attempts to replace those departing personnel and shore up morale in the workforce and operations. Unfortunately, without the necessary injection of funds, these attempts, as in the past, did not boost the fortunes of the newspaper as the cash crunch persisted and deepened its salary crisis.
“It will interest you to know that despite the grueling situation at the company, Mr. Ezeemo, a self-acclaimed industrialist, kept spending heavily on the political front, as a serial aspirant for the Anambra governorship. As at the last count, he had contested four times with different parties from 2010 till 2021 at huge cost, without success, hardly garnering up to 5,000 votes at each attempt. And he now wants his employees to pay the price for his political misadventures,” another ex-staff of the company said.
It was gathered that, shortly after his last failed governorship crashed, Ezeemo, in a memo he personally signed, announced temporary closure of the Orient Daily newspaper in what he called a move to “restrategise” the operations of the company. According to the memo dated December 10, 2021, the company would scale down its operations in order to “minimize cost and attract a sizable revenue for a restart.”
Ezeemo, through the memo, restated his October 2021 directive by telling employees of Orient Daily to stay away temporarily until they were invited for resumption of duties, or else will paid their salary arrears since the accounts department had information of the account details of all the available and non-available staff for settlement.
It was also learnt that a year earlier, a handful of Orient Daily staff, some already owned up to 12 months’ arrears were forced to spend the usually festive December 2020 with a paltry N10,000 ‘Christmas palliative’, a development that forced some of them to the exit door, in frustration.
Our correspondent also gathered that some staff residents at the estate expressed shock that Ezeemo decided to eject them from the staff quarters when he had not informed them of formal closure of the company or settled their salary arrears and other entitlements owed them.
“It came to us as a shock because we have been hearing the rumour that he had closed Orient Daily and set up another company called Umeaku Printing Press. We were waiting for Ezeemo to tell us that we no longer have a job at Orient Daily but he didn’t and the next thing we got was this quit notice,” the staff said.
Going further, the staff said the next shock was that the said new lawyer engaged by Ezeemo refused to accept a tenancy agreement signed by the management of the company at their point of engagement, insisting that everybody must pay a new tenancy agreement of N10, 000 and new rent.
“We told the lawyer that most staff living in the quarters paid subsidized amounts as rent and that these were deducted from the company’s payroll. We told her that, under the staff quarters rent agreement managed by the Administration Department of Orient Daily, we were not issued rent receipts. But she insisted that we must pay a new agreement fee and rent renewal,” the source revealed.
According to her, many see the decision by Ezeemo to impose a new tenancy agreement and increase house rent as the last ditch effort to get rid of his employees without paying their accrued dues in salaries and entitlements.
“This is a calculated attempt to send us away, empty handed. Six months after he suspended the operation of Orient Daily, Mr. Ezeemo, had through his lawyer, doubled the tenancy charges of the staff resident in the estate without any explanation. At the time, we saw it as a move to more quickly run down the staff members’ outstanding arrears through the increased rent.
We didn’t protest. Now, he came again with another increment and tenancy agreement that nobody had sighted and he hasn’t paid us a dime since then. Where is he expecting us to get money to pay him? This is why we are convinced that he wants to push us.”
Ezeemo’s new lawyer, who had imposed a new tenancy agreement and rent hike, feigned ignorance of the debt profile of his client and warned the staff that she was not concerned about any arrears or their past business with the politician.
Another affected staff told our correspondent that the politician had been looking for a way to exculpate himself from responsibility over the arrears owed the workers whose future had been badly damaged. “He wants to sweep the accumulated debt under the carpet, hence the order to the lawyer to devise any possible means of getting rid of the remaining staff in the premises,” she disclosed.
“Our careers have been torn apart by Ezeemo’s dishonest management style. Even while the company was functioning, we could barely eat or plan on our earnings because of the inconsistencies in the salaries. Even the cooperative society some staff members registered and operated was grounded by Orient Daily through non-remittance of funds checked off members’salaries. It was so bad that hundreds of thousands of such funds are currently held up in Ezeemo’s hibernation and unending re-strategizing. We resorted to waiting for the company to be revamped and our arrears paid only for him to issue this quit notice without giving us any dime,” another staff member who was recruited from Lagos lamented.
This paper further learnt that despite the quit notice to the employees, Ezeemo’s lawyer is still threatening to employ thugs and other unlawful means to forcefully eject the employees.
Reacting on his indebtedness to the staff of the company, and the attempt to quit them from their residence, Ezeemo said that “That property is not owned by Orient Daily newspaper. It is owned by Redmark Agency. What Orient Daily did was to pay Redmark Agency for its staff to live in the property, and now that they have run Orient Daily aground, and the company can no longer pay for the rent of staff, Redmark Agency is seeking to recover its property.
“I have spent over N350million on that company from 2015 to date and all of it was mismanaged. Those apartments they are talking about are not staff quarters of Orient Daily. It is the property of Redmark Agency, and Orient Daily rented it from Redmark.
“Now that Orient Daily has folded up, Redmark Agency decided to recover their property. We only rented those spaces for our staff and now that they stopped working with Orient, and Orient Daily has not paid, the agency said they want to recover their property, since Orient is no longer paying their rent.”
Speaking about the backlog of salaries, Ezeemo said: “They are saying we owe them for two or three years, and for that period they have been living on that property. All the laptops, computers, cars, were all taken away by them. They are the people who are looking for my trouble. They stole all the equipment.
“They just think I’m stupid, but I’m not stupid; just that I like to take my time before acting. Else, Redmark Agency would have ejected them long ago, because Orient had not been paying the agency the rent.”
According to another affected staff of Orient Daily, when contacted on Ezeemo’s claim, “with that man’s response and claims, it is no wonder his businesses are in the shape they are now. He doesn’t even know what it means for a company to ‘fold up.’ I expect him to go to school to learn. He could also either go online and read that up or pay a good lawyer to tutor him appropriately on folding up a CAC-registered company. Again, to now introduce a hitherto unknown third-party agency in the staff accommodation issue is indicative of the underhand, dodgy tactics he had been used to in the running of the company and, possibly, his other businesses. With his claim of that paltry N350 million over so many years, it is evident that, from Day-1 in the life of Orient Daily, he knew next to nothing about newspaper business. The media industry is different from importation and trading.”
