Bamise and Elizabeth Ajetunmobi

Bamise Samson Ajetunmobi is not your regular start-up CEO. He is an affable, calm, and soft-spoken businessman who is neither colourful nor outlandish like many CEOs like him born in the late 1980s. His head houses a small factory spinning out business models he believes would reduce poverty in Nigeria which overtook India as the world’s poverty capital in 2018.

‘Banker to the less privileged’. That’s what the 35-year-old CEO called himself in a March 2021 interview with YouTuber Wunmi Elebute.

“Managing [a] loan portfolio of USD 30 million and growing,” Ajetunmobi boasted on his LinkedIn bio. “Our vision is to eradicate poverty and foster financial inclusion in Nigeria and Africa.”

In a world where what CEOs own says a lot, Ajetunmobi may not be outlandish, but he is not expected to lack the toys of a young CEO, luxury watches and SUV, holiday on an Island and an apartment in Lekki, the Lagos coastline neighbourhood that has become home to the rich.

When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) recently labelled Lekki as the hub of fraudsters after claiming it arrested 402 suspected internet fraudsters in Lagos between April and June 2021, it raised controversies on the internet. But there are more who do not cut the image of internet fraudsters, and Lekki is their haven.

Lekki was home to Abidemi Rufai, the realtor and senior aide to Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, arrested for alleged fraud by the FBI in New York in May 2021. It was also home to Ajetunmobi, his wife Elizabeth and their two children, and the headquarters of his company Imagine Global Solutions Limited, the parent company of Imagine Lenders that gave micro-credit loans to small businesses across Nigeria.

Ajetunmobi and his wife have been accused of absconding after allegedly ripping off dozens of investors of billions of naira. Although no one has confirmed the accurate figure, many claim it is as much as N20 billion. Some put it at N22 billion.

In the last four years, Imagine Lenders has gained popularity with small scale traders, but Ajetunmobi and his wife Elizabeth were not household names. They did not court public attention like Invictus Obi, the now-convicted poster boy for entrepreneurship who became a social media celebrity with his grass to grace stories and Ted talks. Ajetunmobi has less than 500 followers on his locked Instagram account. His wife has just over 4,500.

“Bamise was an introvert; he hardly talked during our days on campus. He has always been a calm person who never gets into trouble,” Ajetunmobi’s classmate at Madonna University, Anambra state, who is now a lecturer at the Imo State University, Dr Callistus Ogu, told me on Monday afternoon. 

Ajetunmobi is a soft-spoken man with a look that suggests he couldn’t hurt a fly, and he favoured well-tailored native wears.

“Although I wasn’t so close to him on campus, he wasn’t the type who talks. He always keeps to himself,” Ogu says. “Even on our WhatsApp group created for the Class of 2007 where we all interact and keep up, he only participates in fund donation. He never talks; he’s just there.”

Ogu told me the last time he spoke with Ajetunmobi was early 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and he has not heard from him since then.

So who was Bamise Ajetunmobi? And how did he crash what appears to be a flourishing lending company?

He was born into a conservative Christian family on January 13, 1986. Since graduating with a degree in Economics from Madonna University, Anambra State in 2007, information on his LinkedIn profile said he had spent the last decade acquiring Certifications in Microfinance from the United Nations in 2012, Organisation Behaviour from Heriot-Watt University in 2013 and an Executive Management course from the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) in 2020.

 In April 2008, a year after leaving Madonna, one of the first private universities in Nigeria, Ajetunmobi joined Zenith Bank as a Retail Banking Officer and rose to become Relationship Manager in the Corporate Banking department. He left in January 2017 after founding IMG in 2016.

Born November 9, 1983, his wife Elizabeth, a graduate of English Education from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, grew up in Ota, Ogun State. She is the Chairman of IMG and also runs Aymie Staffing, a domestic and nanny staffing agency. On the UK government website where I found the company’s profile, Elizabeth was appointed a director of IMG UK on August 11, 2021.

She declared herself a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, a North America Island with less than 100,000 people.

It costs a monetary contribution of $100,000 to the Island’s National Development Fund or an approved charity for a family of four to get an Antigua and Barbuda passport, which offers visa-free travel to over 120 countries.

Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda while responding to reports about Ajetunmobi at the parliament on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 said he heard “that he and his wife obtained Antiguan and Barbudan passports, citizenship under the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) and now that person is now wanted for defrauding a number of Nigerians.”

Browne added that he has “already put systems in place to ensure that if he is not here as yet that they could capture him on his way here because Antigua and Barbuda is not gonna be a refuge for scamps.”

He said the CIP is not designed to make the country a safe haven for crooks.

In April 2012, when James Ibori, a former governor of Delta State, was convicted in the UK for fraud of nearly £50m, Elizabeth strongly condemned his action in a Facebook post.

“I’m wondering if this would teach James Ibori and his cohorts a lesson,” she wrote on Facebook at 4:23 pm on April 17, 2012. “It’s a really big shame, and I get baffled over the things people would do for money; their names doesn’t [sic] stand for anything anymore as long as money keeps coming, whichever way it comes isn’t their concern. Let’s not live for today only as generations unborn should benefit from worthy legacies we leave for them.”

Eleven years later, Elizabeth and her husband are in a web of fraud allegations of nearly N20bn.

When he founded Imagine Global Solutions Limited in 2016, registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) on April 5, 2017, and incorporated in the UK in August 2019, Ajetunmobi sought to solve the problem of access to finance, which is the most pressing problem MSMEs face in Nigeria, according to the PwC MSME Survey of 2020.

Despite contributing “a staggering c. 50% to the GDP,” the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says less than 5% of SMEs have been able to access adequate finance for working capital and funding business growth.

“I started banking as a Youth corps member at Zenith Bank. When I moved to corporate banking, I realised that lending was focused on a certain category of people, the 20% and leaving out the 80%, which created a huge gap in the economy. This gave me the opportunity to look at how to create a product that can solve the problem,” Ajetunmobi said in an interview.

In my series of research, the digital footprints of the Ajetunmobis cast them as a saviour of the poor, collecting from the rich (investors) to empower the poor with micro-credit loans paid back with 22% interest while promising investors a 10% return on their fund.

Callistus Ogu said that since members of his university’s WhatsApp group, where Ajetunmobi is also a member, started discussing the viral reports of his alleged fraud over the weekend, he has yet to respond to the discussion.

Ogu told me he never invested in Ajetunmobi’s business

Since news of the crash of IMG went viral on the internet, there have been a series of comments blaming the investors.

“With all the warnings and the stories of Ponzi scheme scams, some people still fall victim. There is no point pitying such gullible people. They deserve what they got!” one Ifeanyi Chukwudum wrote on Facebook.

“He absconded with dumb and greedy people’s money, not investors,” another social media user Kabiru Olowolagba wrote.

I checked through the list of 975 microfinance institutions on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) website and found no record of IMG.

But the company claimed it had 400 loan officers and administrators on its payroll (as seen in a recent TV commercial on Television Continental, over 100,000 customers, offices in Lekki and UK, with photos and videos showing regular disbursement of micro-credit loans to traders in over 700 markets across 19 states in Nigeria. Add this to the modest promise of 10% interest to investors; there’s almost no reason to subject IMG’s credibility to scrutiny.

As I have found out from victims’ complaints, those who invested with IMG were not only lured by a promise of modest returns. Rather, many say, they were convinced by the pedigree of the board of directors who told them that it was safe to invest there. The company appeared to tick all the necessary boxes. 

Some IMG Directors whose profiles stood out on the board include:

Abioye Idris is a UK-trained account and finance executive. She is the Managing Director of Glamshire Investments Limited, Lagos.

Erhi Ojoboh, the CEO of Shalom Microfinance Bank Ltd. She also left the Corporate Banking unit of Zenith Bank in July 2016. 

Edet Udo, the Head of Treasury at Nichemtex Group. He also left Zenith Bank in December 2015 as a Senior Manager.

Ajetunmobi’s profile as an ex-banker with one of Nigeria’s leading commercial banks was another stamp of credibility on his credentials, and he used it well to win investors. For instance, he was listed as a Director on the website of PRA Insurance brokers.

PRA said he was a “leading Corporate Banker at Zenith Bank Plc. He is well-versed in implementing business strategy and has vast experience in directing company’s operations, finance, and marketing.”

In an email on Monday, October 18, 2021, PRA confirmed to me that he was a non-executive Director, but it has now deleted his profile from its website after claiming to have “received a call from an aggrieved investor who made some serious financial misappropriation allegations against Bamise and stated that he had tried to track him down until he stumbled on our website and noticed that he is a Director in the company.”

PRA added that they “were quite shocked to hear the allegations as we were also investors in his company. All efforts for us to contact Bamise till date have proved abortive, and we had to remove his name from our website to protect the image of the company pending when he is found and investigated.”

Contrary to this claim, Ajetunmobi said that he has equity in an insurance company he is part of in a recent interview. And PRA is believed to be the insurance company.

“We are also hoping to double our customer base to about 200,000 then we also recently acquired a finance company which is part of the growth so that we can do bigger businesses in the finance sector. We also have an insurance company which we are part of, we have equity in the business,” he told BIWE talk show.

Henry Eletuo, who left Zenith Bank in January 2020 after nine years at the bank, to join his former colleague Ajeunmobi’s Imagine Lenders as IT Manager, did not respond to the messages I sent to him on social media.

Rosemary Oaikhena, the company’s Human Resources personnel, could also not be reached for comments.

The former staff are leading a normal life on social media like they didn’t lose their jobs. 

In several videos of traders seen on the company’s social media page, they confirmed that the loans are making their lives better.

Ruth Ajayi, a fish seller at Ijora market, was seen in one of the videos confirming how IMG’s loan has redefined her business.

In its June 2021 equity evaluation report sent to investors, Octave Partners, a Lagos-based private equity company, gave IMG a clean bill.

Seun Sobakin, the Associate Manager  of Octave Partners who spoke with me on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 and requested for time to verify my identity as a journalist is yet to respond to my request for comment.

There has been no comment from Ajetunmobi and IMG.

I called the official line of his UK office located on the 1st Floor of 83, Lewisham High Street, London. One Adeyinka who left a voicemail auto response is yet to return my call.

The 1st Floor of 83, Lewisham High Street, is also home to the UK Chapter of Old Boys Association of Methodist Boys’ High School, Lagos.

In the end, if the allegations are established, Ajetunmobi would make history for masterminding the biggest investment fraud in Nigeria’s history. No Nigerian has ever been accused of such a size of investment fraud. Ajetunmobi is already being described as the African Bernie Madoff, the investor who masterminded America’s biggest investment fraud.

In 2017, the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) said about three million Nigerians lost N18 billion to MMM. Glory Osei and her husband Muyiwa Folorunsho, who vanished after being declared wanted by Interpol, were accused of N2 billion investment fraud.

I sent the NDIC questions by email, they are yet to respond.

Many operators of investment scam companies rarely get punished. The authorities must take action lest it continues to happen as long as perpetrators are guaranteed an escape to an Island while victims languish in misery.