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Divergent vs ex-employees: Two sides to allegations against Glory Osei, Folorunso Muyiwa 

Fakoyejo Olalekan
Divergent Enterprise. Glory Osei

Divergent Enterprise has been the name currently trending on social media in the last few days but it’s not for good reasons. The company, owned by Glory Osei and Folorunso Muyiwa, has been accused by ex-employees of scamming their clients through its various subsidiaries which includes fashion, property, and investment. But the end is not near, as the ex-employees say that they are unfazed by Divergent’s threats of taking legal action.

With footprints across various sectors in Nigeria, Divergent Enterprise is the parent company of notable startups, Porkmoney, LandLagos, and Hyberfactory, among many others. The companies, which are all located in Victoria Island, are alleged to be fronts for illegal activities.

According to some ex-employees on Twitter, the companies are scamming their clients, while others accused the co-founders and couple, Osei and Muyiwa, of creating hostile work environments which caused depression to some employees and the sack of about 30 employees within a day.

The accusations began to pour in after Osei posted on her Twitter account, @glory_osei, that her company, Hyberfactory was restructuring, disclosing that all positions in the company were open. This announcement wasn’t well-received by her ex-staff.

[READ MORE: HSBC to sack 10,000 more staff globally]

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Countless allegations

While revealing his experience working for Divergent Enterprise, a Twitter user, @TheGeniusJaj, the publisher of BarcaFocus, said that he only worked for the company for four months before he and 29 others were sacked. He got employed in October 2017 and was sacked by February 2018, but was paid one month’s salary by the company.

He accused Muyiwa of operating a Ponzi scheme to defraud unsuspecting Nigerians, disclosing that Muyiwa organized an event at Civic Center inviting Nollywood celebrities in order to make the initiative look legal.

[READ ALSO: Nigerians may lose their jobs as mass sack looms at British American Tobacco globally]

Another ex-employee disclosed through her Twitter handle, @TherealAda_, that LandLagos was also a fraudulent enterprise operated by Muyiwa and Osei. According to Ada, who started working for one of Divergent’s subsidiaries in June 2019, but got sacked alongside several others across Divergent’s subsidiaries in September 2019, the scam runs through LandLagos, Hyberfactory and Porkmoney.

In one of Ada’s tweets about the company, she stated that, “For Landlagos, he had different lands for sale (3m, 4.5m, 5m and 12m). I’ll talk about the 3m lands because that’s the real scam. So the title of the 3m land was “Excision in Process” which means the lands were for Muyiwa but the government still had a big right to claim them.”

On the allegations against Porkmoney, Ada tweeted that, “Let’s talk about Porkmoney. Porkmoney is a supposed “pig farm” that needed funds to produce the end product which is “Porkoyum” Porkoyum’s office is at Ogba. So what Muyiwa did was that he’d tell people to invest a certain amount and then say he’d pay back with interest after 11 months.”

She added that, “There were different batches for the pork money scheme (Ponzi scheme). This is what Muyiwa did. First batch paid, Muyiwa used their money to flex. After 11 months, he started another batch which he used to pay the first batch. We know how MMM worked now.”

On Hyberfactory, Ada wrote, “Let’s talk about hyberfactory. They sell fake hair and a lot of other fake stuff at ridiculously high prices. If you know about hair as I do, you’d understand what I’m saying.”

Also speaking about her experience working for Network Bank, another subsidiary of Divergent, @bjfranzy said the company once sacked 40 staff, only to hire another 70 to operate what she called a Ponzi scheme.

According to her, Network Bank was another scam used to defraud customers. @bjfranzy also said that products created by Divergent, like the Flat Tummy Tea, Hair NowNow, Slimtea, are fake. She said that actors, or people willing to be paid to testify about the value of these products were hired. @bjfranzy worked there for three months.

https://twitter.com/bjfranzy/status/1186190642516582400

https://twitter.com/bjfranzy/status/1186201784823496704

Meanwhile, Kenny Owen said he knew nothing about the scam, though he experienced the wrath of Muyiwa. According to Owen, two weeks into working for Divergent in July, he became depressed, and was later sacked in September.

Another ex-employee, Onyii Bekeh, criticized the management system of the company. Bekeh who tweeted through her Twitter handle, @OnyiiBekeh, said Osei lived a different life from what she portrayed online.

Bekeh spoke of how the founders were “sharing money weekly on IG (Instagram). I was like but you owe people salary, what’s tea?” According to Bekeh, she didn’t mind the contrast in attitude until they started exploiting them. Adding that she was fired while on sick bed without notice. Bekeh used to work for Femfunds, another subsidiary of Divergent Enterprise.

While for @eOlaaaa, her employment at Divergent was moving from frying pan to fire as the experience was worse than her previous place of work where she was an intern. She said the employment destroyed her entire life, and likened it to slavery.

https://twitter.com/eOlaaaa/status/1186055364736946179

For Segun Oke, another ex-employee, his experience at LandLagos was short-lived as he was sacked after 11 months because Muyiwa had a new business idea, “Working in Divergent Enterprise (LandLagos) for 11 months, lol.. Most of the midnights, you are up thinking, ‘any day now, any moment now son’ …. you could practically be let go for being human. My Team and I were placed on “compulsory leave”.. W..what???!.”

Oke added, “You employ people, (professionals)… Engineers, etc.. Ranting about how intelligent you want the home to be.. 5 goddamn people had to leave their previous firms because what, – a false dream was sold. Tuuueh. Impractical jokes. This one pain me Gan.

“A month after.. Glory is back in the office. Muyiwa with his usual “new business ideas”.. Compulsory leave. LandLagos design and construction team. Fiam.. Gone. That’s where you’d know.. Its all a wash.. Social media real estate firm.” Oke concluded.

Yet another Twitter user, @chuojekwe, who was a former employee of Osei, tweeted, “Glory and Muyiwa are being called out as the scam artists that they are. The worst thing is that I had to live with the trauma of being sacked (with immediate effect) with no reason at all. A fellow colleague (Elizabeth) came to tell me that I was being sacked. No letter, no HR.”

The accusation started years ago

There were many other ex-employees who spoke about their maltreatment by Osei and Muyiwa. However, this accusation didn’t start this year, as the company had been blacklisted by social media platform, Nairaland.

In 2014, one of Divergent’s subsidiaries  True Rebel Fashion, which was one of the earliest enterprises of Osei and Mayowa, had been accused of the same allegations. On Nairaland, a contributor reported that the company was into defrauding their clients by selling fake jewelry. It was disclosed in 2014 that the company had a cunning way of disengaging its workers without pay, within weeks of employment.

Divergent and Osei deny allegations

Both Divergent Enterprise and Osei have denied the allegations. Osei said the accusation of operating a Ponzi scheme was unreasonable as her company had ensured that it didn’t operate beyond its budget.

In her statement, Osei said, “This is a ludicrous statement. Everything we have done from when we started till now is to maximize the resources at our disposal, making sure to not take more than what we need to achieve what needs to be done. It is pretty jarring that anyone would say this given just how fragile our ecosystem is. We are on schedule to paying all of our partners, and in fact, off the potential of all our other ventures would not be needing any more outside capital to finance our growth effort.”

https://twitter.com/glory_osei/status/1186195507049369600

She also dismissed the accusation that employees of the company were and are maltreated by Muyiwa and herself, “… let me categorically state, I have never mistreated any staff. We are a passionate business people, and all our efforts was always aimed at growing the people we have. Could we be gentler? Definitely, and if anything this whole fiasco is a teachable moment for my company. I wish we had handled the VERY necessary dismissals with a little more tact.” she stated while addressing other issues relating to the establishment of the aforementioned companies.

While for Divergent as a company, in a press release seen by Nairametrics, said that its operations are not against the law of Nigeria and conduct due diligence operations in their dealings. Divergent stated that the company is open to stakeholders to inspect and address any business issue.

[READ FURTHER: Uber sacks over 400 staff for the second time in 3 months]

Disgruntled ex-employees

Divergent said that the allegations against the company were being spread by disgruntled ex-employees, stating that none of the accusations are true, adding that it is fair in its dealings and transactions.

Legal tussle/Faceoff

Divergent disclosed that steps are being taken towards legal actions against the ex-employees who made the allegations against the company. The ex-employees are however not frightened by the lawsuit threat.

@glory_osei tweeted that, “if you want to sue; We can go there. I said it last night and I’m mentioning you now. Give me ALL the smoke!”

@eOlaaaa said, “Nobody is scared of lawsuit. Nobody in the tech, agric or big business scenes knew about this clowns before.”

https://twitter.com/eOlaaaa/status/1186241473722880000

While @TherealAda_ said, “I heard Glory wants to sue. Has she heard of a class action? No? Okay”

Another ex-employee tweeted,

Note: Muyiwa is yet to respond to the allegations. While effort to reach Divergent Enterprise and Osei proved abortive with no response to an email from Nairametrics on the matter.

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