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The Independent
Shareholders Association of Nigeria at the weekend faulted the decision
by the Securities and Exchange Commission to sack the Nigerian Stock
Exchange council, describing it as a hasty action “calculated to cover
up her inept regulatory inadequacies.”

The association in
a statement by its national coordinator, Sunny Nwosu, at the end of its
emergency General Meeting on Friday in Lagos pointed out that “the
punitive massive sack (of the leadership and Council of the NSE) was
done to provide soft landing for the estranged member of the council in
defiance to the order of a court of competent jurisdiction.”

The association,
along with some aggrieved shareholders of African Petroleum (AP) PLC,
has, since last year, been fighting a legal battle in a Federal High
Court, Lagos, for the annulment of the controversial election of Aliko
Dangote as the president and chairman of the NSE.

The August 6, 2009
election was held in defiance of an injunction for its stoppage after
the shareholders had instituted a legal suit against Mr. Dangote in the
wake of allegations that he connived with the Managing Director of Nova
Finance and Securities Limited, Eugene Anenih and 12 others to
massively manipulate AP shares early last year.

Though the court,
last March, ordered his removal as NSE President as well as the
nullification of the election organised by the exchange and commission,
Mr. Dangote refused to vacate the office, on grounds of an appeal he
filed against the judgment.

The shareholders’
association, which was awaiting a final verdict on the appeal, on
Friday described last Wednesday’s dissolution of the NSE Council by SEC
as proof that “investors’ protection were calibrated and measured,”
adding “SEC’s punitive regulation and actions on the ongoing court
rulings over the Presidency of the NSE has lowered the confidence level
of the nation’s capital market to an abysmal level.”

The commission, he
said, “clearly breached the confidence of investors and the nation’s
avowed rule of law by arriving at a hurried conclusion without
investigating all allegations and the substance of it,” arguing that
the association was not surprised at SEC’s attitude, accusing it of
“behaving like a maximum ruler in the troubled capital market.”

“SEC, like the
other members of the nation’s financial industry, has been cut by the
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi bug. Officials are now relieved of their
appointments without giving them appropriate opportunity to defend
themselves,” the association’s president said.

The association
maintained that the removal of the NSE council members would not stop
its court action, reassuring investors of its commitment to ensure the
total sanitisation of the capital market and protection of their
investments.