NEWS

nal In Doubt? Check BCI Out

o BY OLAWUNMI OJO AND ADEWALE SANYAOLU
a
d
ness "A desire to enhance competence and minimise chances of fraud and dishonesty in
business practice and daily living," is how he describes his motivation to set up
OPINION
Background Check International (BCI). But beyond that, Kola Olugbodi may
rial
mnists unwittingly have embarked on a crusade to restore high standards of integrity and
ributors moral rectitude in society.
rs
oons
ssions IT was going to be a society wedding to climax a six-year sizzling romance between
ok Dele and Martha. But Martha's father, wealthy and renowned, insisted on a check on
SPORTS his son-in-law's personality, background and past, based on a previous experience. As
e a bank manager, Martha's father was shocked when a claims-verification exercise on
ad the bank's prospective employees revealed varied degrees of falsification. While some
Weekly
had criminal pasts, others were found wanting in the qualifications they claimed to
ts
possess.
FEATURES
s From that experience, he resolved never to take chances on sensitive issues, at least
y & Politics
not when he could afford the services of Background Check International (BCI), the
a intelligence services firm that helped unravel all these. So he hired BCI to conduct a
ce spouse personality background check on Dele, his prospective son-in-law.
ral Health

ation The findings were startling. It was discovered that Dele, who claimed to be medical
kend doctor with one of the teaching hospitals, was a laboratory technologist. Character
y Review wise, he was not found wanting. But that singular revelation rocked the almost sailing
utive Briefs
on
marriage boat.
& Drink
Wheels BCI's Chief Executive, Mr Kola Olugbodi, however reveals that this case is just one of
y Worship
rday Magazine
such handled by his firm in the last three years of its existence as the first background
ay Magazine check firm in Nigeria.The firm is also involved in human capital management and
Ecumenical intelligence operations. It also engages in employment screening, claims and document
re
Care
verification, tenant background check and risk assessment for the finance sector.
BUSINESS
SERVICES
A trained statistician and researcher, Olugbodi, on graduating from Obafemi Awolowo
erty
University (OAU) worked with the National Population Commission (NPC), where he
intments played a crucial role in the 1991 census in Ogun State. From there, he joined the
y Watch defunct North-South Bank.
et Report
al Market
ness Travels Following the bank's distress in 1995, Olugbodi veered into entrepreneurship, starting
ime Watch with marketing and later recruitment through his Josh Cyrus Limited, a recruitment
stry Watch
and outsourcing outfit.
gy Report
ance
pulife "It was from Josh that the idea of background check evolved. Being a recruitment
agency, we discovered that the missing link was always the issue of background check.
When you recruit on behalf of your client, regardless of how candidates fare at
interviews, we could not vouch for them. There were questions bothering on the
authenticity of all their claims and documents. Experience brought discoveries of how,
because of the situation of things in the country, people are tempted to falsify claims

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and forge certificates in the process of looking for jobs. So we decided to leave
recruitment and concentrate on this missing link in the employment processes. That got
us to register BCI in 2004," he explains.

BCI, in addition, assists employers in investigating the background of their current

workforce, to confirm and verify their claims as well. It equally does security
consultancy for corporate organisations and tenant background check for landlords.

It strives to unravel the true personality of caregivers and drivers for parents and car
owners and organisations. "We have had situations where people employed as house
guards are the ones who give the household away to thieves. This can be prevented if
you have information on the past of your prospective employees or current staff. After
getting the information, it is not always a case of laying them off. It is just to guide
your actions, decisions and dealings with them afterwards," Olugbodi says.

The verification starts using the leads in the resume or claims, such as past work
places, home address, places of birth, references, etc to ascertain the veracity of all
claims and the character and conduct of persons involved in the past. In the past, BCI
had found several addresses to be fictitious and this had helped in curbing incidences
of fraud.

In a society where people do things carelessly, giving people the benefit of the doubt
and without the culture of verification, many firms and individuals have been
defrauded in one way or the other. Olugbodi says a recent survey showed that 10 per
cent of most companies' workforce have criminal backgrounds and tendencies. Seventy
per cent of all loss of revenue was linked to employees' theft, internal fraud or
collusion with outsiders, and about 33 per cent of job applicants were established to
always falsify claims.

So the challenge for BCI initially bordered on assuring clients that it could do the job,
in the face of scepticism and mistrust. But today, all these have been erased by its
ability to deliver, as some of its clients refer it to other organisations and individuals.
Olugbodi boasts that BCI has made the recruitment process easier.

He is alarmed at several atrocities and frauds in the financial sector, which he insists
could be checked or minimised with background check on staff. He adds that funds lost
to cases of fraud are too much compared to the amount that could be used on such
checks.

The BCI boss advocates sustenance of background checks and re-appraisals to be re-
assured of the character of staff. He says: "As long as things continue to change, you
must constantly re-appraise and once your staff know they would be checked from time
to time, they would sit up."

He stresses that most people now refrain from presenting falsified documents because
BCI makes them to fill in forms that could let security agents go after them when they
are caught, thereby sanitising the workplace environment.

Olugbodi is optimistic that by the time individuals and corporate bodies embrace the
culture of background check, due diligence and process, there would be no room for

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people to take society for granted. "It is high time people got more security conscious.
It is fair if you have inefficient and inexperienced people employed based on their
claims but when you employ criminals with pre-conceived mind to do fraud, it is
dangerous," he cautions.

He is sure of sanity and that the kind of security Nigerians are made to go through
abroad would be history. Hence, he also advocates background check in screening of
politicians and aspiring leaders to save the country from public disgrace.

With a vision to make necessary information available to individuals and organisations

to boost the process of sanitising the country and wining international respect for it
and its citizens, Olugbodi says profit-making is secondary to BCI.

While saying that background check is a norm in the hiring of personnel such as
janitors, cooks, nannies, etc in the developed world, the BCI chief executive bemoans
that the same is not applicable in Nigeria, citing cases of even spouses deceiving each
other. To stem this, BCI now does checks for intending couples, having realised that
people need to be sure of the claims being made by their spouses and their family
background. A common case, he adds, is married men deceiving their brides that they
are single. With hindsight, Olugbodi advises parents of intending couples to dig into
the background of their would-be in-laws.

He is happy that background check is gradually becoming an industry in the country,

and he is elated to be the first of the pack, in which he foresees a bright future.BCI, he
states, has a working relationship with some security companies overseas and works in
conjunction with private investigators in the United States and Europe, as well as some
background check companies. This, he notes, makes the cost of conducting checks
outside Nigeria cost-effective.

"Most of them also verify documents in Nigeria through us. We also help to confirm
persons' background before international companies enter into business relationships
with Nigerians. International background check is also one of our services."