It was revealed on Wednesday at the House of Representatives that the Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Ms. Arunma Oteh, allegedly spent N30m on hotel bills in eight months following her appointment in January 2010.

In one day alone, she allegedly spent N850,000 on food, while on another day, she incurred additional N85,000 expenses in the same hotel for which SEC’s account was debited.

Two Access Bank Plc employees were also said to have been hired as advisers to Oteh.

The two employees, Mr. Charles Ugheli and Mr. Titi Olubiyi, were reportedly engaged in 2010 in breach of due process and against the advice of both the legal and human resource departments of SEC.

SEC is the regulatory authority of the Nigerian capital market, where Access Bank is a key player.

The two officers were said to still retain their appointments with Access Bank but were being paid allowances equivalent to that of a director in the Federal Civil Service whenever they travelled out of Abuja.

The disclosures came to the fore as the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market looked into the competence of SEC to adequately regulate the market in the light of the crises that had bedevilled the market lately.

The committee said the engagement of the Access Bank employees by SEC was an infraction that could explain why the commission had been unable to stamp it authority on protecting investors.

The Chairman of the committee, Mr. Herman Hembe, noted that questions bearing on integrity, honesty and competence would be raised when a regulator opted to employ workers of one of the agencies it was regulating.

He stated, “Worse still, these employees are still workers of Access Bank. They are paid salaries by Access Bank, but work for SEC.

“This smacks of plenty fraud and the regulation by SEC is impaired by bias and incompetence.”

The Director, Human Resource, SEC, Mr. Useni Dauda, and the Commissioner, Enforcement and Legal, Mr. Charles Ahamefula, both admitted on oath that the two employees were hired on the directive of Oteh.

While Ugheli is designated as “Project Adviser,” Olubiyi serves as “Communications Adviser.”

Oteh, however, told the committee that the assignment of the two did not conflict with the core mandate of SEC as the regulator of the capital market.

She explained that Ugheli, for example, was a project adviser, whose duty was to assist the commission in expanding its office accommodation in Maiduguri and Port Harcourt.

When asked whether SEC did not have the capacity to hire or use its own employees for such duties, Oteh claimed that the commission did not have the capacity.

“Ugheli is on secondment from Access Bank as projector adviser; his job has nothing to do with our work as regulators,” she said.

However, when asked whether this had been a practice in SEC, the human resource manager replied, “It is strange in my opinion, as we have never done that before.”

The committee observed that Oteh’s failure to see a link between her actions in relation to the Access Bank employees and the work of the commission questioned her competence as the director-general.

“We will look into your competence as DG of SEC. You will bring all your certificates that qualified you for this job tomorrow and the letter of request to Access Bank for these employees and their schedule of duty,” Hembe directed.

Oteh did not respond to the allegation that she spent N30m on hotel accommodation and bought N850,000 food on a particular day.

On several occasions, there were hot exchange of words between Oteh and members of the committee, as the latter consistently queried her managerial capabilities.

A member of the committee, Mr. Olabiyi Oyekola, tried to find out the status of Access Bank and UBA stocks in the capital market, but the DG said she could not answer the question without being briefed by the commission’s surveillance team on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

An attempt to find out SEC’s decision on the shares of Industrial and General Insurance and Globe Real, among other firms that had cases with SEC did not yield much result.

Oteh responded that some of the cases predated her, while others were before the Investment and Securities Tribunal.

The committee also produced a letter allegedly written by Oteh stopping an administrative proceeding into the state of the five nationalised banks, a decision it said was “unjustifiable.”

However, the SEC DG in a reaction by his spokesperson, Mr. Obi Adindu, said, “On hotel accommodation, when she was headhunted from her former job as Vice-President of the African Development Bank, she was given the option of choosing either a furnished accommodation or receiving cash in lieu.

“She chose the former. When it was not forthcoming, she was offered hotel accommodation in line with the rules guiding the public service. She did not violate any rules whatsoever by staying in the hotel.”

On the engagement of the Access Bank employees, Adindu said the DG did not compromise on anything, as she used her personal goodwill to attract two people on secondment to SEC from the bank.

He said, “They (Access Bank employees) work in brand communications support and project management/ premises maintenance, two areas in which SEC was, and still is deficient, and which are absolutely unrelated to the regulatory mandates/roles of SEC. There is, therefore, absolutely no conflict of interest involved in the matter.

“They work pro bono, i.e. without earning any salary at SEC. They are not employees of SEC and have no intention of taking employment at SEC. The DG of SEC should be commended for using her goodwill to attract them at no cost to the commission.”

The President, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, Mr. Michael Itigboje, who also addressed the committee, lamented that many of the institute’s members were out of business “because the market is at its lowest ebb today.”

He informed the panel that people they had advised in the past to buy shares lost their investments and no longer had confidence in returning to the market.

“Many of our members have died of heart failure,” he said.

Itigboje suggested the enactment of a law making it mandatory for all foreign companies doing business in Nigeria to be listed on the NSE.

He held the view that the presence of more foreign firms on the Exchange could help in restoring investors’ confidence.

Source: Punch/John Ameh