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Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, chairman of the embattled Transnational Corporation (Transcorp), is now under intense pressure to resign her appointment.
The pressure, according to sources, is informed by the alleged embarrassment Transcorp brought to the capital market, where Okereke-Onyiuke is a regulator and her alleged disregard of corporate governance in a company which she chairs.
The first step to ensuring the emergence of “good guys with credibility”, sources said, was at last week’s meeting in Lagos where the board members endorsed Nicholas Okoro to take over the mantle of leadership and give the corporation a new direction.
Her resignation, according to sources, will set the stage for fresh discussions for the likely return of OPL 281, the oil bloc won by Transcorp during the 2006 licensing round, but which was later revoked after the payment of $21.275 million out of the $30 million signature bonus.
It will also put the corporation in a better stead to ride on the credibility of the new team under Nicholas Okoro, the acting group managing director, to tap into the fresh opportunities in both Cross River and Benue states where Transcorp has just been appointed to replicate the Hilton hotel business as well as a cassava project respectively, the source noted.
Cross River suspended the payment for the counterpart funding for the hotel over the discovery of the mess in the company, while Benue, last week, awarded the cassava project to the Nicholas Okoro led team.  
Prior to this stage, Transcorp’s allege link with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo had been seen as enough reason for investors to develop apathy for the capital market as well as become indifferent to fresh ideas for Transcorp.
Transcorp, in the last one month has run into turbulent waters starting with the arrest, arraignment, and detention of its top management over allegations of money laundering and other fraudulent charges. 
Later to come early this month was government’s revocation of the sale of the first national telecom carrier, NITEL, and its mobile arm, Mtel. The two telecom firms were acquired by Transcorp for $500 million in a negotiated deal in 2006.
Tom Iseghohi, Transcorp’s group managing director, alongside Buba Mohammed, company secretary, and Mike Okoli, company’s deputy general manager were arrested and currently in detention on the order of the court over an alleged N15 billion fraud.
Okereke-Onyiuke’s trip to Abuja over the weekend marked the climax of rumbling in Transcorp over her troubled tenure. At the meeting, she was asked to take a bow to restore the confidence of over 298,000 shareholders and investors in the company.
Shareholders and board members are accusing the chairman of being responsible for the tale of woes besetting the corporation and are asking her to resign so as to loosen her stranglehold on the company to allow for an independent inquiry or audit.
They argued she brought and practically forced Iseghohi on the board without interviews, no background checks and no references to enable the board take an informed decision.
This move to see her out of the saddle, BusinessDay gathered has received the support of the security agencies who have so far spared her because of the discovery that some of the approvals flaunted by Iseghohi to have been given by her were discovered to be forged.
Okereke-Onyiuke at the meeting with both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the State Security Services (SSS) denied knowledge of billions of naira allegedly siphoned out of Transcorp, but admitted that she gave only two approvals.
Her invitation to Abuja was due to inability of the board and the shareholders to tell her to resign for fear of being witch-hunted on the stock exchange as well as due to the fact that some board members have soiled their hands and so lack the moral justification to confront her, a source said.
“You know we have two sets of board members. Board members that are clean cannot confront her to step down because they fear she could deal with their companies and cause the prices of their stocks to dip on the exchange.
“Also, board members who are not clean cannot face her because she was aware of some of the infractions they have committed and they feared they could be used against them”, the source said.
An instance is an army general who is now on the run for allegedly conniving with Iseghohi and collecting over N4 million from Transcorp to issue a report clearing both Buba Muhammed and Mike Okoli who had earlier been penciled down to exit over suspicious deals.
Another is a chairman of a frontline bank who also serves on Transcorp board but which intelligence report shows he was allegedly involved in the mess at the corporation.
The involvement of some board members in some of the allegations over which Iseghohi was being held prompted the re-grouping of the board last week at the meeting at Ikoyi Hotel in Lagos. 
BusinessDay learnt that the meeting provided the opportunity to forestall Iseghohi’s return as well as cover up the tracks of others that colluded with him.
“The meeting in Lagos, last week, was attended not because some of the members wanted Transcorp to survive, but to come together to prevent Iseghohi from returning because they know he is defiant and could spill the beans”, the source noted.