Capital Market Operators in the Nation’s Stock Exchange has been advised to help the ongoing Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBNs) reforms.

 

Victor Ogiemwonyi, Chairman Technical Committee, Governing Council, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers/ Managing Director Partnership Investment Company Limited, (Member of the Nigerian Stock Exchange) gave this advice in an exclusive interview with investadvocate in Lagos Nigeria

 

“To be fair, nobody will quarrel with the fact that what Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is doing is not proper. Some of the Banks went against the normal Banking ethics, a Bank using its depositors funds to buy its own stock, which is not a good practice” he said.

 

Ogiemwonyi confirmed to investadvocate.com that the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM) may not have had the kind of Market infractions it witnessed in the past period, “some of us saw it; but we were not sure that it will be as deep as it was” Ogiemwonyi affirmed.

 

“From this point, Market Operators and Stakeholders really need to look at how they can help make the reforms work. I can affirm there are measures of stability and confidence coming to the Market and we are hoping that when the AMC is finally in place and takes out the toxic assets and debts, we are going to see a definite confidence returning, which will ensure liquidity in the NCM. This will bring about an orderly growth of our Capital Market” he said.

 

He confirmed to investadvocate.com that one of the things that was clear when the reforms started was that every Capital Market stakeholder was guilty in one way or the other. “Regulators were not proactive, Operators got involved in some Market infractions, in a nutshell, and there were irresponsible Stockbrokers, inexperienced Regulators and greedy investors” the CIS Technical Committee Chairman affirmed.

 

He advised Market Operators to moderate their excesses and help the CBN’s reform, “if all of us can moderate the excesses of the immediate past, I think we would be helping the reforms by that way” Ogiemwonyi said.

 

As earlier reported, Sanusi Lamido on resumption of office sacked the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of five (5) Banks and subsequently another three (3) making it a total of eight (8) Bank Chief Executives and injected a bailout of funds of over N600 billion to save the Banks from going under.

 

Some of the reasons for the sack action bordered on major failures in corporate governance, lack of customer and investor protection, inadequate disclosure and transparency about financial positions of these banks.

 

 

Others he mentioned include critical gaps in regulatory framework and regulations, unstructured governance and management process at the Apex Bank, uneven supervision and enforcement.