Social media activist, Martin Otse, better known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), has accused On-Air-Personality, Chinedu Ani, better known as Nedu, of fraud running into millions of Naira.
The OAP has promptly responded, dismissing the allegations.
VeryDarkMan accused Nedu of defrauding a non-governmental organization (NGO) that approached him for a partnership to provide scholarships to Nigerian students.
VDM said the promoters of the cause who are based in the United Kingdom paid Nedu an advance payment of N60 million for the charity project.
The activist claimed that Nedu became difficult to track down once he collected the money and failed to hold up his end of the bargain.
He disclosed that the charity promoter had been asking for evidence of the billboards the paid for but Nedu had not been able to show them any.
He also accused Nedu of putting up a news account for donors to send money to instead of the account number they all agreed to use.
In a swift reaction, Sarah Williams Konha, the chief operating officer (COO), Talking Drum Management Agency, the company believed to be owned by Nedu called a press conference where she confirmed that the NGO indeed contacted them and made the advance payment for the project.
She said that the NGO pulled out of the partnership four days before the event, citing low publicity and inadequate donations.
“We had slated March 9, for the launch of the initiative. On the 5th of March, Mr Jilian, who works for the platform we were doing this partnership with sent an email informing us that they would no longer be part of the event. They would no longer be providing the support they were supposed to provide and would be pulling out,” she said.
“… four days before the event, we had to inform the event planning company that we had a problem. Since our partners were not fulfilling their end of the bargain, we would not be able to pay them their balance of 40 percent. Then we had already paid them 60 percent, there is proof of transfers and everything necessary, but we needed them to figure out what they could do.”
Sarah said despite the internal differences, they went ahead with the event, making budget cuts due to the NGO’s withdrawal.
Sarah said they raised N19 million in pledges after the event and attempted to reconcile with the NGO, but both parties failed to reach an agreement.
“Mr Nedu was like should he cancel and I was like you cannot cancel. We have already gathered people, people are coming in for this event. We are going to go ahead and see how we are going to figure it out. So we informed them, they immediately went to work and started adjusting the budget,” Sarah said.
“In the emails that he had sent, he said and I quote ‘It would be prudent to refrain from using the remaining funds at this time. We understand that this decision may come as a disappointment considering the efforts you have towards the event. Please know that these decisions were not made lightly. Please go ahead to cut down your budget for the event and recover monies that you have spent from various people that you have given money to if possible.”
Sarah revealed that they were invited by the police and provided all necessary evidence, including emails and proof of transfers.
She said the police investigated the matter and advised them to settle internally, stating that it was not a criminal issue.
“After the event, we came back to the drawing table with this team and said okay, we are not angry that you ditched us last minute and put the brand and his name at risk. We have handled the situation and thankfully, nobody knew there were internal issues,” she said.
“The event has come, prominent Nigerians came and we have been able to get pledges of around N18-N19 million, we have raised about N4 million. What would you do moving forward? Because we have outstanding bills to pay and we also have these pledges that we need to follow up on and move forward.
“We went back and forth, we could not agree. So the first thing we did was we had a contract with the event planners. We paid them the sum of N4 million naira which was after all the running around because it was not their fault. We had several meetings and conversations, and landowners got involved back and forth till we were not making any progress and they decided to write a petition to the Nigerian police.
“This petition was written on the 26th of June 2024. So they went to the police and petitioned them, so they invited us to come and discuss what the problem was. We honoured the invitation and provided all the information and evidence we had. The police tried to see if they could resolve the matter, they also did their investigation and at the end of the day, they advised us to settle because they said it did not seem to be the problem that warranted criminal charges.”
Watch VDM’s allegations here.
