Staff of Took Trading Company, recently picketed Century Group over alleged indebtedness running into millions of Naira.

Took Trading Company is an offshore support services company, that  supplies diesel, dry foods, fresh water, waste disposal to offshore vessels and installations.

The workers of the trading company, who stood in front of the premises of Century Group, owners of Century Energy in Lekki,  Lagos,  carried placards which read:  Century Energy Stop the Corporate Bullying’, ‘We have waited for long; Pay us our money’, among others.

The staff alleged that Century Energy owed their company more than #20 million which has caused non payment of  their salaries.

One of staff of the trading company  who gave his name as Chikezie said: “I have not been paid since November because we supplied to the company but they have not paid us…”

The Chief Executive Officer of Took Trading, Mr. Toju Okoro, who spoke to journalists said he was aware of the protest, admitting that he has not been able to pay his staff because money for supplies made to Century Energy had not been paid.

Okoro noted that his company supplied 125,000 litres of MGO to Century Energy to the tune of N36,259,500 since November, regretting that after initial payment of N15,740,000, nothing had been heard of the balance. He said so many correspondences had been sent to Century Energy for the balance,  all to no avail, noting that the hardship the oil services company had put his firm through, warranted the protest from his staff.

Responding, Mr Ayebatari Wilson,  Head of Procurement for Century Energy under whose office the deal was carried out, admitted that his company is actually indebted to Took Trading but blamed the delay on slow response from their own client, who should have paid them for them to also pay Took Trading.

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“Century has not said it is not going to pay; Century  is also being owed by other clients.

“We do the contracting on behalf of the vendor. When the client does not pay, it becomes an issue between us and the vendor.

“We are a big company, so we cannot go to our client’s office with placards as they have done now because we are looking at the relationship.

“I understand Toju because he is not a big businessman like Century, so any little money tied up is like tying up his capital, I understand this.

The problem is that they have told Mr. Toju that they have paid us; Took Trading is the vendor recommended by the client (Folawiyo) to us. They have not paid us complete money and we have been going back and forth with them. Unfortunately it is not only Took Trading, there are other vendors like that and they are agitating. Century should have carried placards to clients to pay us our money but we cannot do that; they are smaller and we can understand why they have to do that.

“There is an arrangement to settle the debt but I don’t want to discuss it right now; when we meet him, we will tell him the arrangement on ground to settle this.

“I have told Toju on a friendly note to be calm because we are seriously working on how we can force the clients to settle us but then I understand his position,” he said.