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he
capital market regulator, the Security and Exchange Commission, said
yesterday that about 260 persons and organizations are to face charges
over the crisis in Nigeria’s capital market, a week after the head of
the Stock Exchange, Ndidi Okereke-Onyuike, was fired.

Director General of
the SEC, Arunma Oteh, announced Tuesday while meeting with the House of
Representatives members, that the commission has names of individuals
and groups who will be brought before the Investment and Securities
Tribunal, for various financial offences.

“We have also been
working very hard on some of the complaints that ordinary investors
have shared with us as to some of the things that happen in our
market,” she told the House committee on Capital Market, headed by Umar
Jibril. “As a result of that, we are going to take about 260
individuals and entities to the Investment and Securities Tribunal for
different types of allegations of share price manipulation and insider
dealings.” The Former Director General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange,
Okereke-Onyuike and the former president of the Exchange, Aliko
Dangote, were removed from office last week by the commission, at the
climax of squabbles between the both parties. They had accused each
other of administrative and financial mismanagement.

In a major move,
the commission ordered independent investigations into the allegations,
and appointed an interim administrator for the Exchange, in a process
that has also helped emphasize its regulatory capacity, which has been
missing in years.

The House committee
summoned Mrs Oteh, Mrs Okereke-Onyuike and Mr Dangote yesterday in the
aftermath of the sackings, holding hours of meetings behind closed
doors with Ms Oteh after the others failed to appear. They are to now
appear today.

Mr Jibril said the
invitation was based on worries over media report on the removal,
saying the lawmakers needed to act to guard against unwarranted effects
of such actions on the nation’s economy.

Fragile capital market

Ms Oteh, however,
said the commission intervened to save the fragile capital market that
has already been hit by allegations of various malpractices, including
insider trading and share prices manipulation.

“Like you know, our
call and mandate is to protect public interest and to protect the
investor, particularly what I will consider the voiceless masses of
people,” she said.

She acknowledged
the widespread allegations of increasing insider dealings, share price
manipulations, of weakness in enforcement of excessive risk taking in
the market environment, saying that informed the plan to possibly bring
charges against those listed.

The irregularities,
she said, have arisen as a result of poor regulation, which also partly
was responsible for the huge crash of stock from N12 trillion to N5.5
trillion in 2008.

“We’ve seen concern as to whether regulators had really been playing
their roles. As a result, since the crash, the SEC has spoken on trying
to enhance its own capacity to regulate the market has tried to focus
on addressing the issues that led to the crash, some of which relates
to the global financial crisis, some which relates to market integrity
issues in our market,” she told the lawmakers before the closed session
meeting.</