Nigeria: Naicom Versus Nicon

18 December 2007

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) recently sacked the board and management of NICON Insurance Plc and Nigeria Re-insurance Company over allegation of non-payment of claims and failure to submit statutory returns to the commission. But Jimoh Ibrahim, the core investor in NICON, considers the action of the commission as illegal and high-handed, since the penalty for non-remittance of statutory returns is a fine of N5, 000 per day while that for non-payment of claims is N500, 000. The standoff has further eroded the credibility of government's privatisation programme and worsened the image of the insurance industry.

NAICOM, we believe, acted rather hastily by sacking the board and management of a company that has reduced its claims liabilities from a pre-privatisation record of N27 billion to N12 billion within two years. Why has the commission not gone after the underwriters of Sosoliso and ADC airlines that are yet to indemnify the relatives of the fatal air crashes of 2005 and 2006? Ibrahim, on the other hand, cannot justify his failure to make statutory returns to the industry's regulator. Besides, there are outstanding claims that NICON has yet to pay; the law empowers NAICOM to protect the interest of policyholders by enforcing claims payment.

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