The worst kept secret in Nigeria was finally exposed in America a few days ago when the famed short-sellers., Hindenburg, published their research note calling Tingo a fraud from top to bottom.
The whole thing is more embarrassing than damning — no attempt seems to have been made to put up an even passable ruse. A couple of months ago, a friend asked me — in disbelief — how this company could be a public company in America. My explanation was that no one had yet found it worth their time or effort to take the company down, yet. Once someone did, it would crumble like a pack of cards.
Over the last few months, stories had started to come out. The Athletic did a piece in February detailing all the dubious claims the company had made and several embarrassing red flags. The trigger was of course that Dozy Mmobuosi had the confidence to put himself out there as a prospective owner of a football club in England. They found that the company had unpaid debts of as little as £257 which had then led to a court judgement against it.
Then there was the part about the fake airline:
Last week, The Athletic reported how Mmobuosi is the sole shareholder of a company called Tingo Airlines.
In November 2020, a post on Mmobuosi’s personal Facebook page said “fly with Tingo Airlines today”, describing routes between London and west Africa.
An Instagram page for Tingo Airlines links to a website that does not exist and also shares images of an Airbus A321 plane that appears to have been digitally doctored to apply the ‘Tingo Airlines’ livery.
This is even worse than Hadi Sirika’s fake Nigeria Air launch on the day before he left office.
The entire note from Hindenburg is worth reading, if you care for that sort of thing. It is hard to decide which part is the most embarrassing:
Tingo claims that its NWASSA platform is a groundbreaking innovation that cuts out middlemen by allowing farmers to sell products wholesale or retail directly in their home marketplaces. The company calls it “Africa’s leading digital agriculture ecosystem”. [Pg. 3]
Last quarter, Tingo reported $125.3 million in revenue through NWASSA, putting it on track for $501 million in annual revenue. [Pg. 15]
The company has been inconsistent about when it supposedly launched NWASSA. In an interview with Techpoint in 2019, Dozy said he launched the NWASSA platform in January 2019. In an investor results conference call from March 2023, the story changed, with Dozy claiming it was launched in 2020.
Putting aside the mystery of when the platform was launched, the company has declared it to be a huge success. As early as July 2021 it claimed NWASSA platform “processes 500k daily transactions with a value of over $8 million”, implying ~180 million annual transactions.
The company has indicated that its explosive NWASSA business was taking place via a “USSD GSM transaction platform” a system of text messaging orders (i.e., “Press 2 to order rice”). We could find no evidence in media, company filings, or the company’s website that such a system exists aside from Dozy’s claims that 15 million transactions per month are processed in this way. [Pg. 10, Pgs. 20–21]
You make a bold claim like this, and then:
Historical Captures Of The NWASSA Website Show That It Was Never Fully Completed
The Website Still Included Test Images. None Of The Products Had Reviews Or Ratings
Historical archives of the website from January of this year show that the now “under maintenance” site was never fully developed. It listed its first product as “test”.
This is all very bizarre. And the question that continues to bug me is why? Why go this far? What is the reason for telling such stupid and embarrassing lies like this as if no one will discover? Hindenburg sent someone to Nigeria to investigate the company and it must have been the easiest income that person ever earned as the company did not even pretend to exist.
The Financial Times also sent someone to the company’s ‘office’ to look around:
The Financial Times recently visited Tingo’s sparsely staffed headquarters in Lagos, where the company’s Nigeria CEO and his chief technology officer struggled to answer basic questions, including on the identity of their banking partner.
After a press release from Tingo late last month announcing a “multi-billion-dollar pipeline” of commodities exports going through Dubai, the FT visited its Dubai branch, located in the Jumeirah Lake Towers, which houses the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre free zone. The office was empty. One neighbour said a few people occasionally came into the premises, but had not been seen for several days.
The shares have of course collapsed with the only surprise being that the company is still worth something:
What concerns me about this is how stupid it all looks. As someone who spends a lot of time scanning the web for Nigeria related stories (sign up for our weekly newsletter here), I can tell you that Nigeria has a serious image problem around the world. It is a problem worth trying to fix by the country’s leaders as a matter of urgency.
To have someone rub salt on that open wound in this Tingo manner is just…embarrassing.