More Rot Uncovered In MTN Nigeria As Employees Expose Fraudulent Activities, Sexual Harassment, Victimisation By Chief Sales And Distribution Officer, Adebiyi, Other Principal Workers

More employees of telecommunications company MTN Nigeria have exposed widespread corruption, including sexual harassment and worker victimization, perpetrated by the company’s Chief Sales and Distribution Officer, Adekunle Adebiyi, General Manager, Northern Regional Operations, Amina Dambatta, and other senior officers.

The aggrieved workers, under the banner of ‘Anonymous Concerned Staff of Sales and Distribution Division,’ alleged in an email sent to the leadership of MTN Nigeria and MTN Group in South Africa on Thursday and seen by SaharaReporters, that a cabal led by the aforementioned officers had grossly violated the rights of workers by suffocating their voices and victimizing them for daring to complain about certain anomalies they spotted.

Adebiyi and Dambatta, along with members of their cabal, including Abdulhamid Hassan, a Senior Manager in Sales and Distribution, and Hamza Ibrahim, who was recently appointed Senior Manager in Sales and Distribution, planted their cronies in key supply and distribution channels of the company, thereby shortchanging MTN and pocketing huge sums of money monthly, according to the group of aggrieved workers.

According to the group, some of Nigeria’s northern trading partners were owned by Adebiyi or Dambatta, and these enterprises were given preferential treatment over others, which was against the company’s policy.

In their email to MTN’s management, the disgruntled employees also accused the senior executives of keeping their buddies who had previously robbed the company of large sums of money rather than delisting and prohibiting them from doing business with the telecommunications carrier.

Staff workers who complain about these unethical acts, according to the whistle-blowers, are either reassigned to isolated areas or troubled zones in Northern Nigeria as punishment or fired outright for daring to defy the power brokers.

The email partly reads, “We, the concerned staff of Sales and Distribution Division in the Northern region of Nigeria, write to bring to the attention of MTN Group and MTN Nigeria Communication Plc’s Board, Management, Risk and Compliance division about key conflict of interest, fraudulent activities, sexual harassment and threat of dismissal that has continued to be pervasive in the Northern region. Due to fear of victimisation, staff in the North are too afraid to speak.
 
“The General Manager, Northern Regional Operations, Amina Dambatta, runs a cabal made up of her, Abdulhamid Hassan (Senior Manager in Sales and Distribution) and Hamza Ibrahim (recently appointed Senior Manager in Sales and Distribution). Amina and her cabal including Adekunle Adebiyi, Chief Sales and Distribution Officer, have interests in some trade partner companies in the Northern region. This makes her compromise, thereby placing other partners at a competitive disadvantage.
 
“Here is an example: in the Sokoto area, Munifaz, Gobir Jega and Amali are three dealerships in Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara states and they are all owned by the same person and Amina has interests in all three.

“She and Adekunle Adebiyi facilitated the granting of dealerships to the same person under three different names, disguising themselves as different persons against MTN conflict of interest policy. The owner of this company has also not declared to MTN that he is the owner of these three competing companies.

“Nobody ever questioned why Amina and Adebiyi approved for one person to own three different dealerships without it being declared to MTN Nigeria for transparency.
 
“This conflict of interest that Amina and Adebiyi have is the reason why Gobir Jega and Munifaz got away with fraud. Their staff defrauded MTN Nigeria to the tune of N17 million and N13 million respectively but they were treated with a mere slap on the wrist.