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 follows: 1. That the regulatory map of the NCM is not generally available or universally known and accepted as it should be; 2. That the Securities and Exchange Commission, as the apex regulator for the Capital Market has been under-supervised and has not been accountable to anybody; 3. That by its own admission, SEC was unable to supervise the Stock Exchange; 4. That the Financial Statements of the SEC lacks transparency; 5. That the mechanism for regulatory interpretation and dispute resolution in the Capital Market suffered from the absence of a competent Board for the Commission for the past 10 years; 6. That the operation of the ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING COMMITTEE without competent judicial personnel was never and could never have been intended by the enabling Decree; and 7. That the panel came to the conclusion that an apex regulatory body modelled after the SEC of the USA is unsuitable for Nigeria. You might be forgiven to assume that this panel report was issued today but alas no. The report is as contained on pages 102 – 103, Chapter Six of the Report of the Panel on the Review of the Nigerian Capital Market submitted to the Federal Ministry of Finance, September 1996. This report, popularly known as the Dennis Odife report (co-incidentally the man under whom Ms. A. Oteh –...