Investors in one of Nigeria’s many agritech crowdfunding platforms, Agrorite, have petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to help them recover their more than N3 billion trapped in the company’s investment scheme.
Agrorite prides itself as a premiere digital agricultural platform that improves the livelihood of smallholder farmers by connecting them with finance, smart farming solutions, and premium markets.
The company received funding from willing investors to invest in farm projects with a promise of returns to the investors at a fixed time.
How problem started
All seemed to be going well with Agrorite and the investors until late last year when investors were no longer able to receive their money at the due period.
According to the investors who spoke with Nairametrics in camera, the company’s founder and CEO of Agrorite Toyosi Ayodele, kept on shifting the date until it became clear that there was no intention to repay them.
Copies of the petition sent to the EFCC by the investors sighted by Nairametrics showed that the investments were not only made in Naira but also dollars. In one instance, one of the investors put in N482 million in a Naira-denominated Agrorite project and $100,000 in a dollar project. He is currently hoping that the EFCC will help him recover the money.
In a near-fatal situation, an aged woman who invested her entire pension benefit of N40 million in the Agrorite project is said to have collapsed and landed in the hospital when she realized her money might not be recovered.
- “Our entire life savings have gone down the drain just like that. We trusted Agrorite with our lives and this is what we are getting. Some of us are now in depression and the only thing that can lead to recovery is for Ayodele (Agrorite CEO) to release our money,” one of the investors said.
Agrorite staff speak
All efforts to reach the company’s founder and CEO for comments proved abortive as his phone was off as at press time. However, some staff of the company, who agreed to speak with Nairametrics under anonymity, confirmed that the CEO has been arrested by the EFCC over the matter.
Asked why the company has been unable to pay the investors, one of the staff of the company said:
- “We don’t know what happened and why they are not being paid. Ours is to bring clients and they pay directly into the company’s account. The CEO is the only one that manages and authorizes payments to the investors. What the EFCC officials who came to pick up some of our staff said was that there was no money in the company’s account.
- “Some top management staff of the company were also arrested and released after the EFCC was able to ascertain that they were not in control of the company’s accounts.
- “Right now, all transfers from the company’s accounts are being tracked by the EFCC in a bid to recover the investors’ funds.”
Checks by Nairametrics show that the company’s website, agrorite.com, is no longer available on the web, suggesting that the domain name might have expired and not yet been renewed.
Agrorite’s bright days
Toyosi Ayodele founded Agrorite as a digital agriculture farming network in 2019. According to the founder, the company’s mission was in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) objective 2 “Zero Hunger” and primary core value, which entails sustainable food production for Africa by effectively involving smallholder farmers.
By 2022, Agrorite claimed it had amassed a network of over 130,000 farmers, and approximately 125,000 hectares of cultivated farmland, with about 350,000 metric tons (MT) of cultivated agricultural produce traded across 25 Nigerian states.
- “This is in addition to managing commodity trade for more than ten agricultural commodities, including cocoa, sesame, cashew, ginger, maize, and shea butter, etc. With warehouses for storage, which meet needed local and international quality standards,” the company said in a statement issued at that time.
In 2021, the company received $50,000.00 from Nigerian Breweries at the United Nations World Food Program Zero Hunger Sprint.
