Zimpapers Logo

Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
A Nigerian company, Courtville Business Solutions Plc, is reportedly trying to arm twist Government officials in its bid to win an electronic vehicle insurance cover note deal without going through security vetting processes.

The Herald is reliably informed that officials from the company’s subsidiary registered here, Courtville Solutions Zimbabwe, are threatening Zinara officials to ensure that the deal sails through.

Courtville Business Solutions executive director (Africa Expansion) Mr Oye Ogundele, who is based in Lagos, Nigeria, on September 14 wrote to Insurance Council of Zimbabwe (ICZ) chief executive officer Mr Cletus Chitambira giving orders on how the electronic insurance cover note deal should be implemented.

In the process, Mr Ogundele outlined some stunning resolutions favourable to his company, which he claimed were a result of a meeting held on September 7 at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development offices.

Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Dr Jorum Gumbo and Zinara board chairman Mr Albert Mugabe, however, dismissed the resolutions.

Some of the resolutions in the letter written by Mr Ogundele to Mr Chitambira read: “As you are aware, there is an ongoing mediation by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development on the stalled process of deploying the ICZ/Courtville system for electronic cover note after our appeal letter to the minister following our inability to reach an amicable conclusion at the meeting with Zinara.

“To this effect, a meeting was held at the ministry on Wednesday, September 7, 2016 and the following resolution was reached at the meeting:

(1). Zinara will write letters, (a) to ICZ retracting the directive in its letter of March 30, 2016.

“That Zinara shall henceforth deal with ICZ directly for anything that has to do with electronic cover notes and that Zinara shall not in any way form or deal directly with individual insurance companies. With immediate effect, Courtville can activate its system to allow members of ICZ to issue electronic cover notes on the platform but without interaction with Zinara’s system until the security clearance for Courtville is done.”

Asked on the authenticity of resolutions claimed by Mr Ogundele, Dr Gumbo said: “I don’t know anything about those resolutions. I told them (Courtville, Zinara and ICZ) to go and sort out their issues.

I called them here after Courtville threatened to sue the ministry saying you have given us a contract that you failed to honour. I asked them to explain their issues and I told them that as a ministry, we have nothing to do with any agreements you have entered. They said there was an agreement that was signed between Courtville and ICZ where they wanted to do business with Zinara and I asked them so where do we come in as a ministry? We have nothing to do with that because we don’t work with insurance companies — Zinara does that.”

Commenting on the same matter, Mr Mugabe also dismissed the resolutions by Mr Ogundele saying Courtville was an interested party in the whole matter.

“He (Mr Ogundele) is an interested party on this particular issue so anenege achidawo kuti zvinge zvichimubetsera. The ministry recommended that Zinara you do not have a mandate to do third party insurance cover notes.

“Third party only comes to you for licensing. It’s for insurance companies so let those in the insurance field do that — yours is only to make sure that when you license the vehicle the third party must be authentic.”

Asked on the resolution to cancel the arrangement between individual insurance companies with SRTC, which is already processing electronic third party cover notes Mr Mugabe said: “We don’t have that mandate to stop the insurance companies. It’s out of our realm to say don’t go and to talk to that person, but there is an issue that needs to be resolved between ourselves and ICZ. That is the issue we are looking into now.”

He, however, did not clarify the issue.

Government sources close to the matter told The Herald that Courtville was trying to circumvent security vetting given its past history in Sierra Leone, which is littered with controversy.

The source added that the shareholding structure of Courtville subsidiary in Zimbabwe was also questionable as it consisted of only two locals.

“They know that if they go through the necessary security vetting they will not win the deal because of their dirty history in Sierra Leone,” said the source.

“Now they claim that they have registered locally but it only has two local directors one of whom is Mr Jesman Mutangadura. The rest are foreigners. These are Ibrahima Kane (Senegal), Ismail Adebola Akindele (Nigeria), Rotini Williams Alaoye (Nigeria), Adewale Sonaike (Nigeria) and Oyeleye Ogunyemi Ogundele (Nigeria). Can we call this a Zimbabwean company with such an administration? In any case they are coming with a big brother mentality as if we do not know what we want as Zimbabweans.

“They are forgetting that recently, they embarrassed our President during the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari and now they are coming for our tax payers’ money.”

Security concerns were raised last week over the deal with fears that the company might end up creating a parallel vehicle data base.