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Sacked
Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke
ought to have thrown in the towel long before the events of last week.
In August 2008 President Yar’Adua set up a Presidential Advisory
Committee to review the activities of the capital market, and make
recommendations for reform. One of the committee’s recommendations was
that a change in leadership was required at the highest echelons of
both the Stock Exchange and its regulator, the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). Tragically, only a few of the reforms were
implemented. The Director-General of the SEC, Musa Al-Faki, was eased
out, but Okereke-Onyiuke held on to her job, and declared that she
would not resign until late 2010, when she would be 60.

Okereke-Onyiuke
will go down in history as one of the most visible and controversial
personalities on the Nigerian business scene in the last decade.

She made history
as the first woman to head the Exchange. To her credit she brought the
Exchange to local and international prominence, spearheading a string
of reforms that modernised what had been an anachronistic organisation.
She introduced the All Nigeria Share Index (ANSI), and the Central
Securities Clearing System (CSCS) among other major innovations. Under
her the stock market grew rapidly.

But these
successes only helped to mask grave abuses, and deflect attention from
massive indiscretions. The Transcorp saga is a prominent one.

Okereke-Onyiuke
chaired the board of the controversial Transcorp, which was quoted on
the Exchange, which she ran. None of the conflict-of-interest noises
that Nigerians made seemed to faze her. Under her supervision the
company lurched from disaster to disaster, culminating in a massive
debt load, and investigations by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission. Okereke-Onyiuke was quizzed, while a number of senior
management staff were arrested.

In spite of the huge outcry against her continued chairmanship of Transcorp,

Okereke-Onyiuke
stubbornly held on to her position. During Barack Obama’s election
campaign she spearheaded a controversial fundraising drive that raised
millions of naira from companies quoted on the exchange. The
fundraising turned out to be illegal, according to US laws, and again
the EFCC had to step in.

All of these
questionable acts only succeeded in dragging the Exchange into
disrepute. Okereke-Onyiuke trudged on, unmoved by all the justifiable
criticism that trailed her.

Under her watch
the Exchange was also implicated in cases of manipulation of shares.
The most prominent was the one involving billionaires Aliko Dangote and
Femi Otedola, the only two Nigerians to ever occupy the Forbes List.

The shares in
question belonged to African Petroleum, a company in which Otedola had
significant shareholding. Otedola accused Dangote of influencing a
massive devaluation of AP’s stock price.

Shockingly, Mr.
Dangote, vice president of the Exchange at the time of the crisis, went
on months later to be elected as the president. By this time of course,
the ball had begun to unravel.

The stock market
crashed with the same ferocity with which it had boomed years earlier.
Much of this should rightly be credited to the global meltdown. But it
would be disingenuous to claim that the meltdown is solely responsible
for the mess that is the stock market. A significant part of the
problem lies in the way that the stock exchange has been managed over
the years. It didn’t help that the regulatory agency, the Securities
and Exchange Commission, simply forgot its job.

Now, it is time
to take stock of Okereke-Onyiuke’s legacy at the NSE. It is not enough
to relieve her of her job; it should also be ensured that thorough
investigations are carried out to cover the activities of the last
decade. Many questions remain unanswered; from Transcorp, to the
dubious IPOs that proliferated during the bank consolidation exercise.

Just before she
was relieved of her post, Okereke-Onyiuke was accused by Mr. Dangote
(who was also sacked alongside her), of mismanaging the affairs of the
Exchange, to the point of bankruptcy. But even Mr. Dangote has got
questions to answer.

The rot in the
Exchange is probably deeper than we think. We call on all concerned
agencies of government, from the Securities and Exchange Commission,

to the relevant law enforcement agencies, to ensure that no lead is left unexamined, and no culprit allowed to go unpunished.