Nigeria’s unemployment rate stands at a staggering 33.3 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), meaning over 23 million Nigerians are unemployed.

This figure is expected to jump to as high as 40.6 percent in 2023, going by the predictions of KPMG, a global consulting firm.

NBS published its data in 2018, and in 2019, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced its Creative Industry Financing Initiative (CIFI) to afford Nigerians the opportunity to obtain business and student loans of up to ₦500 million.

One year later, Chioma Ude’s Envivo Communications, an IT services company, made hundreds of job seekers open Access Bank accounts, take ₦3 million loans each from the CIFI programme and transfer the sum to Envivo’s account. This move under the guise of providing training, laptop and jobs for them to repay the loans threw the applicants into debt, and they are still paying three years after. FIJ captured this problem in a report.

Our first report captured how 20 of the affected people petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate Ude and the company, but more people have come out to reveal how over 100 unemployed Nigerians suffered the same fate and are yet to recover.

CAUGHT IN UDE’S WEB

Steven Adegoke* was 25 when a friend of his told him of Envivo. Steven’s friend said he saw an ad on LinkedIn and applied. He encouraged Steven to do so too.

The year was 2020, and Steven was one of the over 23 unemployed Nigerians looking to be gainfully employed. He had a degree in mathematics, but that was not enough to fetch him the kind of job he wanted, so he took his friend’s advice.

On April 17, 2020, Olugbenga Obadina, Ude’s associate, sent a message to Steven saying he had been accepted into the Envivo Software Engineering internship programme. Obadina sent his phone number and asked Steven to send him a message so he could be added to a WhatsApp group chat.

Steven had no idea he was being recruited to take a loan that would further impoverish him. All he knew from the ad was that he was getting an internship, and it felt like a win.

Steven’s friend, Bolaji Olumide*, told FIJ he enrolled for the same software engineering programme he introduced Steven to, and they both were now in debt.

READ MORE: Chioma Ude’s Envivo Communications Used 20 Students to Get N60m Loan From CBN. Now, the Students Are in Trouble

Steven and Bolaji were hired to work on the Lagos State Learning Management System (LMS) and promised a monthly salary of ₦100,000. Envivo, however, only paid them half the sum for five months.

“We worked with Theodora Amadi on the LMS,” Bolaji told FIJ. “We were the ones who worked on the backend, uploading courses for the LMS which took months to put together, but we were unpaid.

“After Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu launched the project on March 31, 2021, Envivo cut all connections with us. Nobody from the management reached out to us.”

BANK TROUBLES

As FIJ earlier reported, Envivo pledged to pay the participants ₦50,000 per month for a year, provide laptop, training, graphic cards and a two-year employment package.

It is from this employment that the company was supposed to make deductions to repay the ₦3 million loan to Access Bank, but after failing to provide the training, materials and jobs, Access Bank came calling.

Bolaji needed to move on with his life, so he began paying the loan out of his pocket, but he still owes over ₦1.6 million.

Premier Recovery Services, a debt recovery agency, wrote to Bolaji on June 22, 2023, claiming to represent the bank and demanding he pay up. They also reached him on WhatsApp.

“I gave them Obadina’s number to request the money back from him, but the agent kept disturbing me,” Bolaji told FIJ.

Steven’s troubles started in 2022. Speaking with FIJ, he said, “I got a mail from Austesal Nigeria Limited saying I owed a loan, and thereafter I got a series of calls from Access Bank staff saying I was owing the bank. Envivo remained silent and failed to respond to a series of mails to them.”

Steven and Bolaji confirmed to FIJ that Envivo ran three programmes and there were over 100 people who participated. To get access to the loans, all participants had to forfeit their school certificates and NYSC certificates.

Now they cannot get jobs without their certificates and with their bad credit scores, meaning if KPMG is right, Steven, Bolaji and hundreds of other people would be part of the 40.6 percent unemployed population three years after attempting to join Ude’s company.

FIJ called and texted Ude and Obadina for reactions to the allegations, but neither of them responded.

*Names have been changed to protect sources’ identities