The Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, on Tuesday shunned an investigative hearing by the House of Representatives on the near collapse of the Nigerian capital market.

The hearing is being conducted by the House Committee on Capital Market and other Institutions headed by Mr. Herman Hembe.

The Minister of Finance and Sanusi were listed to make lead presentations before the panel, but they were absent at the proceedings.

The absence of the Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Stock Exchange, Mr. Oscar Onyema, infuriated lawmakers the more, as he wrote the panel claiming that he was not accountable to the National Assembly.

The panel, in a reaction to the letter, summoned Onyema to appear “unfailingly” before it on Wednesday (today).

He is to come along with the evidence of his qualifications to run the NSE.

“Let him come tomorrow with his university degrees and evidence that he did his National Youth Service”, the Chairman of the panel, Hembe, directed.

Hembe disclosed how Onyema wrote the committee and also called him on the telephone to say that the NSE was not answerable to the House.

He added, “We invited the NSE and gave them ample opportunity to attend the hearing.

“But, the DG wrote us to say that we have no powers to oversight the NSE.

“Section 88 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) empowers the House to investigate any matter that it has powers to legislate on.

“We have CAMA, which is a product of the National Assembly.”

A member of the committee, Mr. Razak Bello-Osagie, berated Onyema’s conduct, saying that it exemplified the insensitivity of the operators of the capital market to the plight of investors who lost money to the system.

“Many people died as a result of losing money; we are here to find a way out of the mess, yet a DG is writing us this type of letter.

“He said he would be holding meetings. Is it the same meetings he has been holding that have not improved the fortunes of the market?” he added.

The Chairman of the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), Mr. Muraina Ajibola, described the conduct of Onyema as “contempt of parliament.

“I have the letter here with me and he wrote that NSE is ‘not an agency or parastatal of the government.’

“People like this man must be punished to serve as a deterrent to others who are still living in the ignorance of being above the parliament”, Ajibola stated.

The DG of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ms Arunma Oteh, reviewed the factors that led to the crisis in the market, admitting that “regulatory gaps” in the past contributed to the development.

“We agree that we need to improve and we have been working on it since I came on board in January 2010”, she told the panel.

However, she argued that a combination of factors, including weaknesses in the global economy, the Euro-Zone debt crisis and the recent Arab Spring affected the market.

She recalled that from a market capitalisation of N4.99tn in December 2009, the figure rose to N7.9tn in 2010, an improvement of 58 per cent.

But, she admitted that factors aforementioned forced the market to lose part of the recovery again in 2011.

Oteh stated that one of the new measures was to provide merging guidelines that were non-existent before now.

She also said that SEC had digitalised its operations to make the dissemination of information faster and accessible by investors.

“We also need to tackle the issue of corporate governance.

“We have issued a new Code of Corporate Governance since April 2010”, she added.

The panel will respond to the presentation today when members will ask her questions.

Oteh explained that the commission was committed to building a “world-class capital market” that would restore and sustain investor-confidence.

“We have tightened more regulatory issues to make the market recover quickly”, she said.

The President, Association for the Advancement of Rights of Nigerian Shareholders, Dr. Faruk Umar, drew a link between the crisis that rocked the banking sector under former CBN Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, and the near collapse of the capital market.

He recalled that when almost everybody knew that many banks were sick, Soludo kept assuring Nigerians that there was no cause for alarm.

“He deceived people and people kept putting their money in bank shares.

“People like Soludo should be invited to explain their role in this whole episode”, Umar suggested.

He also advised the National Assembly to empower the Investment and Securities Tribunal to carry criminal prosecution of persons who distorted the operations of the market.