SEC – Lest We Forget! - 15022010
SEC and the Capital Market – Lest we Forget!
February 14, 2010; 1801 hrs, Lagos, Nigeria
“Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.†- Marquis De Sade (French nobleman and Novelist
whose perverse sexual preferences and erotic writings gave rise to the term sadism. 1740-1814)
…..the findings of the panel are as ...view middle of the document...
A. Oteh – recently appointed Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission served her internship) has been largely ignored and sacrificed on the basis of political expediency; yet the realities it raised over thirteen years ago remain true till date. Recall that when we raised, for a second time within five months, the corporate governance conflict at the Securities & Exchange Commission - Udo Udoma & SEC – Legality, Perceptions and Sacrifice - the motivating concern was based on the ‘conspiratorial’ silence evident in the UACN press release and the reporting of same by the Nigeria media where the more than obvious status of Senator Udo Udoma, newly appointed Chairman of UACN Plc left out his role and position as the subsisting Chairman of the apex capital market regulatory body in Nigeria – The Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Signposts of a weakened regulator
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SEC – Lest We Forget! - 15022010
This could not be an omission by such an institutionalised firm like UACN Plc we reasoned. If everyone therefore left it out, our position on August 22, 2009 was therefore a reality the firm wanted to avoid. Now that the Senate (though the Senator Ganiyu Solomon led Committee on Capital Markets) has reacted to the petitions forwarded to it, the supervisory Minister (Remi Babalola) has equally issued a press release followed immediately by a rebuttal by the SEC chairman, Senator Udo Udoma; it is important to recalibrate our arguments and present fact based facts to justify why a decision on the conflicted status of the SEC Chairman’s office is required now, more than later.
Going back to Basics In our BULL IN THE CHINA REPORT issued on August 2009, post the August 14, 2009 landmark decisions on the leadership lacuna in the financial market space by the CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (SLS); we stated on page 56 that “The financial crisis has revealed severe shortcomings in corporate governance. When most needed, they often failed to provide the checks and balances that the market needed in order to cultivate sound business practices." This was consistent with our February 2009 NCM report where we had stated clearly that the capital market meltdown was a direct result of the leadership meltdown that occurred at the very top of the Nigerian Financial System. Indeed, we opened the August 2009 report on the SEC with a declaration that “the immediate response of the apex capital market authority in Nigeria, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) on August 19 to the August 14 actions of the Central Bank of Nigeria in disciplining the executives of five banks portrays a regulator who was in no hurry to reform both itself and the market it presides overâ€. To us, SEC had created the conditions for a diminished view of the institutions and we can find at least, in the minimum, ten (10) fronts to indicate this flawed representation of an apex regulator: 1. December 2005: The Point of...
