Ken Ikebunna, a BSc in Chemistry holder, is a Nigerian youth who worked as a wellhead testing consultant in the oil and gas industry, and decided to focus on FG's larger campaign for youths in the oil sector to try out non-oil export business.
While his colleagues, who had made some money in the oil industry, decided on foreign citizenship and Japan, Imo State-born Ikebunna, now married with two children, chose his path in non-oil export business.
He loaded two 20-tonne cargoes (sesame seeds) targeting Dubai but changed his mind for China. Several things went wrong with the shipping line and it suffered a loss of about N100m. The company about which he wrongly said that he was sending the goods to Dubai has stopped talking to him. He is now a frustrated exporter, and regrets not escaping to other countries with his companions.
demand:
“We are demanding compensation for our losses. That's all. The amount of money we have spent on this matter has put me in a position where I regret investing that money in Nigeria. I have many friends who have bought permanent residency in Canada and they have not spent up to N50 million to travel to Canada with family.
“It is not good to make this kind of investment in Nigeria and make such losses. Nigeria is looking for an opportunity to increase non-oil exports, this is not a good example for someone who is just building his business.”
huge loss:
Ikebunna said he had taken a loan to finance that transaction. “Currently, that loan is incurring interest on a daily basis due to penalties. So, we want a situation where we can be free from our burden. In fact, this also gave us an opportunity to establish continuous business transactions with those who were supposed to buy it from China.”
He said that while their talks with the Dubai company were not strong, it was a Chinese company that had to buy sesame from them. “We had to collect the payment before shipping. But when they were telling us that their bank was delaying giving us the Letter of Credit (LC), we now said no, that was not our agreement.”
How it started:
The victim told the story in his own way. “My name is Ken Ikebunna. I am the Managing Director of Highflyer.com Nigeria Limited. Our company is an exporting and trading company. We export agricultural goods and minerals from Nigeria.
What happened:
So, in 2024, we tried to export sesame seeds. Initially the consignment was billed to go to Dubai and we had informed the shipping company about the same. We sent the goods, two 20-foot containers of sesame seeds. We sent it to Apapa at the APM terminal in Lilypond.
“But while we were still negotiating payment terms with our buyers, we informed the shipping company, Hapag-Lloyd Shipping Nigeria Limited, that we are no longer shipping it to Dubai, but to China. We have a forwarding agent, so it is the forwarding agent who communicates with the shipping company. So, we informed the forwarding agent, who informed the shipping company. The shipping company admitted that they canceled the shipment and kept the containers in the port It is not being sent now, we have the documents for these steps.”
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Description:
So, later on, we now find out that they actually sent it against our instructions.
Now we asked them some way, if they can bring it back. He said no, the ship that was with it would have to go to Dubai and then come back to Nigeria.
They even called us from Qatar asking if they could sell it for us. The negotiations did not go well due to the terms of the sale.
The cargo was moved to Lilypond port on October 2, 2024. The ship departed from Lilypond on November 13, 2024. So you can see, when the ship left from October 2 to November 13, it had already stayed for a month. It then traveled by sea to Dubai and returned to Nigeria on February 2, 2025.
So you can see the number of months in between. So, by the time he came back, we told the shipping line that by now we knew the goods would have been spoiled, and we were rejecting the cargo.
Thus we hired a loss and claims consultant, and resolved to take the route of completely rejecting the cargo and filing a claim.
The shipping line tried to do this, but instead of calling for a settlement, they sent their law firm. The law firm with his retainership has written to us. The title of his first letter was “Without Prejudice.” So we thought they were coming to make peace, but we didn't know they were trying to confuse us into agreeing to anything the shipping line said.
So, we were going back and forth on whether to agree or not. He now said that the practice is that we should agree to a joint survey; We had to bring a surveyor, the shipping line would also bring a surveyor, both parties would determine the extent of damage on the merchandise, and then now we would know how much we could claim if we said the merchandise was defective.
Now from February to April we kept going back and forth agreeing on whether to conduct the cargo survey or not.
The first instance of cargo survey was conducted on April 10, 2025. We hired our own surveyor; He appointed his own surveyor.”
According to Ikebunna, a number of glitches occurred along the line until it became clear that the shipping company was unwilling to do the right thing.
He said one mistake was bringing the goods back through the import terminal instead of export. This, he said, led to the imposition of heavy duty amounting to N11m. “In fact, at one time, those containers accrued demurrage, because in August, the shipping line paid about N10.8 million on demurrage for those containers. We paid over N800,000 in demurrage on those same containers, which they had already paid. So, all these expenses are attributable to the import terminal at which they dropped it. But if they had taken it to the export terminal, none of that would have counted Would have been.”
He said they agreed to come the next day to complete the evaluation but the next day, he said the other party did not come.
He said the endless frustrations led him to look for legal options. He said he had their surveyor's report, which showed that the stuff he had seen from outside was already in bad shape. “And in fact, it is no longer fit for human consumption. The cargo was meant for human consumption. It cannot survive another round of export. So the only solution at that time was to convert it into animal feed and recover some money from it, but that was not done.”
price:
He said: “At the time we were selling the goods, the invoice value of the goods was $72,000. Now, at that time, the Free On Board (FOB) value of the goods was over $60,000. Last year at that time, a tonne of sesame was selling for N2 million locally. And we had 38.2 tonnes. That brings us to N76 million of local value of the goods, not including transportation or your profit or anything. These Prices are still verifiable.
Why Lagos!
On why the Port Harcourt company chose Lagos as the export point, he said: “I bought the goods in Kano, took it to Lagos. Which was closer. It is closer to ship from Kano via Lagos than Port Harcourt. Port Harcourt is a long distance. So the transaction was done in Lagos.”
Interference
“When this matter first arose, before involving lawyers, before engaging a claims consultant, we filed a petition at the Nigerian Shippers Council, and told them that this is the problem we were facing at this company. We complained that the company was hopping us back and forth. We have that letter.
“And we were not happy with the way the Nigerian Shippers Council handled it. I was thinking that the Nigerian Shippers Council, in collaboration with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, would take the concerns of exporters very seriously. But when this whole thing happened, they didn't want it to seem like they were taking sides.”
Evidence of decay:
Ikebunna said: “The goods were in good condition when we shipped them. By the time it was opened for inspection, the container was already in bad condition. The body of the container is lined with what they call 'kraft paper' to prevent moisture from collecting on the outside of the container body.
“The kraft paper was all wet. It's what they call oxygen extractors or dry bags. Like if you buy a new shoe, those little things that take out moisture. There are big sections of it, as big as your palm, that we hung inside each container to remove the moisture as the stuff was in transit. They stayed longer than the scheduled time and they were completely soaked. We have photos of it from reports and everything.
“So, once the stuff came back and we opened it up to April 10, 2025, we saw that the stuff was already pretty bad. Because we recognize that maybe what we were seeing on the outside is bad, maybe the ones on the inside are still good. Maybe whatever climate conditions or whatever is going on in there may not have reached them. Maybe some can be addressed. So we were expecting them to say, “Okay, this End the inspection, let's figure out a way forward.”
Advice to young Nigerians:
With this level of frustration and disappointment, what would this young man advise other young people to do or learn from his story?
“Well, I would advise any young person wanting to invest in Nigeria to be able to have patience and flexibility. Honestly speaking, if you don't have patience and flexibility, something like this can really ruin one's health. In fact, when this thing happened, I was almost mentally wrecking. It was some people who are very old in the shipping business, who advised me that I should not allow this matter to destroy my health. This led to blood pressure problems. It may happen.
“One of them told me that he earned a lot of money when he was young. In fact, he said that he started earning money from the age of 32. But within the same 30 years, he faced a huge financial loss. He started having BP problems since the age of 30. He has been taking BP medicines since the age of 30. He is now almost 60 years old. So he was the one who advised me to never worry about my health. Don't let it go to waste. One day I will look at this transaction. It looks very big and it is not worth taking away my health.
