Tag: Dogara

Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, made history on Friday, July 8, when he became the first ever presiding officer of the National Assembly to visit the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and to sound the closing gong to signal the end of the trading on its floor.

But while his visit was a new development, it is well known that since his emergence as the Speaker last year, Dogara has been very active in championing calls for the revival and deepening of Nigeria’s capital market.

The NSE is not in its best of times. The market is yet to recover from the global financial meltdown of 2008 which resulted in over N10 trillion being lost by hapless Nigerian investors. Sadly, efforts to investigate and bring all those responsible for the crash to book for their actions or inactions have been frustrated by powerful forces, leading many Nigerians, especially the middle class, to stay away from the NSE after losing their savings and pensions to insider abuses and other infractions by some operators.

A 2010report by the National Bureau for Statistics puts over 100 million Nigerians below the poverty line. With the dwindling revenue from oil resulting in non-payment of salaries by 27 out of 36 states, and almost 500 local government councils, more Nigerians are being daily plunged into poverty.

This calls for desperate and urgent measures by political institutions to diversify the economy, create wealth, and reduce income inequality. There is therefore the urgent need to deepen the capital market and make it attractive to the ordinary Nigerian to make living.

Not new to the happenings in the stock market, having served in the committee of the House that investigated the events that led to the crash of the market, Dogara has continuously advocated for measures that will deepen the market and return investors’ confidence. It is his conviction that democracy, the best system of government ever to be invented by mankind, can only function effectively and deliver on its promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when wealth is created and deliberately allowed to trickle down to the ordinary people. He believes strongly that this can be achieved through the capital market.

For him, a situation where a large chunk of the nation’s resources or capital is heavily concentrated in the hands of few chief executive officers, CEOs,  would further widen the inequality gap, eliminate the middle class and plunge more people into abject poverty, thereby posing serious threat to the sustenance and survival of democracy. He has made it known in different fora that the skewed distribution of wealth is even more worrisome because the flow of resources from Nigerian citizens to multinational companies operating in the country that makes them rich but unfortunately, these same companies, rather than invest in the NSE and grow the economy of Nigeria, would rather repatriate their profits 100 percent to their own countries without investing a dime back to the system.

On many occasions, the speaker has made his position on this sad trend clear, sounding it out to all that care to listen that major extra-ordinary measures will have to be taken by the parliament and indeed all political institutions in the country to compel these large multinational companies with interests in oil and gas and telecommunications to get listed on the NSE.

His argument is simple: foreign telecommunication companies who have been operating in the country since 2001 have not only been declaring huge profits, but are also listed in their countries’ stock exchanges yet have continued to rebuff calls for them to list in the NSE, even though they make most of their profits here.

Dogara has noted that ironically, it  is only from the patronage they get from Nigerians that they make this huge profit, which explains why even though Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, its capital market ranks third – a very big anomaly.

No wonder when he sounded the closing gong of the Nigerian bourse on July 8, he said that the parliament would strengthen capital market laws to empower regulators to sanction erring operators. The Speaker told the market operators that his visit underpins the fact that the House pays serious attention to the Nigerian capital market and that for the capital market to take its rightful place, drastic measures must be adopted. He said that having rebuffed calls for them to list on the stock market, it was now time to get the multinational companies to comply by adopting the carrot and stick approach.

Dogara also charged the capital market regulators on the need to be on top of their responsibilities in order to boost investors’ confidence in the market. To make them more efficient, he suggested that the regulators be empowered to sanction operators that arbitrarily abuse the market so as to regain investors’ confidence. He said it was important to regain investors’ confidence and give them the needed assurance that anyone who perpetuates infractions in the market would be dealt with. According to him, this will also serve as deterrent to others who may want to scam investors in the future.

Said he: “We need to deepen the market, we need to create and sustain confidence in the market and for confidence to come back, we need to do more. When we start sanctioning, confidence will come back to the market.”

The speaker received a standing ovation when he told operators on the floor of the NSE that the House would soon pass laws that would compel multinationals, oil and gas companies, telecommunication firms and privatised companies to list on NSE to deepen the market as part of efforts to engender economic prosperity.

One thing that emerged from the speaker’s visit is that unknown to many, most of the public enterprises that were privatised were actually mandated to list certain percentage of their shares on the NSE as part of the sales and purchase agreement. Regrettably, none of the companies is listed, in contravention of the sales and purchase agreement they signed with the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE).

Dogara however, assured that the House, through its committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation will investigate these cases of abuse with a view to getting them to stick to the terms of agreement they had with BPE.

Describing Dogara’s visit as historic, NSE’s council president, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, noted that the House under his leadership had shown concern about the economy and the capital market. While assuring the speaker that market operators will not relent and would do everything to ensure that the market becomes the best in the continent, he said it was very gratifying that Dogara is leading moves to create a conducive environment for the market.

Of course, the speaker needs the support of all men and women of goodwill to bring his dream of deepening the capital market to fruition. Here, his colleagues and senators alike must, as a matter of necessity and urgency, consider and treat proposed legislations related to this purpose with the seriousness and urgency they deserve and for the President to assent to the bills when they are eventually passed into law.

• Hassan is Special Adviser on Media & Public Affairs to Speaker Dogara.