First and foremost, life in the villages, with few exceptions in terms of some oasis of wealth in each rural area, is still poor, nasty, brutish and hard for a vast majority of the people, because of corrupt leadership. Illiteracy is also a factor in the low level of investment in stocks by rural dwellers.

Equally relevant are socio-cultural factors that militate against modern investment options. For example, many Nigerians are used to keeping their money at home, or coming together with neighbours and friends to make monetary contributions at stipulated intervals.

Moreover, Nigerians in general are paid starvation wages by their employers, both by the government and private bodies. A man or woman who receives a paltry salary that can hardly meet the basic requirements of daily life cannot save any money for investments in stocks or anything else. In a nutshell, millions of Nigerians are so impoverished that they cannot save for the rainy day.

These days, a lot of awareness about investment potentials has been generated by banks, insurance companies, conglomerates etc through aggressive marketing and advertisement of their public share offers. Several of these companies and corporate organisations announce public offers so frequently that one is at a loss sometimes to understand the rationale behind such measures.

I am not an expert in such matters. But I believe that the firms which frequently offer shares to the public for sale must be reaping bountifully from the exercise. Some people I know who invested in the so-called blue chip companies have made some good money by buying shares when prices are low and selling them when prices appreciate.

Of course, it is only the big men and thick madams in the society, particularly those in the upper echelons of government and the business elite that can muster the financial wherewithal to buy shares in significant quantity and sell at a handsome profit.

Some of my friends who are knowledgeable in such matters told me that the high prices of some stocks are artificially generated by companies that create unnecessary scarcity of their stocks by buying up their own shares and dumping them later when favourable conditions for huge profits exist in the stock market.

They assured one that such practice is unethical, but people get away with it because stockbrokers and top people in the companies that engage in the unethical conduct make millions of naira from it.

Again, sometimes after buying shares through public offers, it takes more than a year for one to get the share certificate. I bought the shares of Transcorp around January 2007. Up to now, I have not received my share certificate. I have gone to the United Bank for Africa Plc, one of the receiving agents for Transcorp share offer several times.

Each time I am told that the registrar that handled the matter for Transcorp keeps telling the UBA staff: "come today, come tomorrow." I suggest that if the company cannot give us our share certificates, they should at least refund our money to us. After all, many Nigerians, including myself, paid money to buy the stocks of Dangote Flour Mills Plc, only to discover that the company allotted just a little over ten per cent of the shares we paid to thousands of small investors, and duly refunded the balance.

Sensible allotments

My friend in the Nigerian Stock Exchange told me that although the same Dangote Flour Mills gave me slightly above one thousand shares out of the ten thousand that I requested, some well connected individuals were allotted hundreds of thousands of shares.

This is one of the reasons why First Bank is one of my favourite companies as far as the allotment of shares is concerned: the company sensibly allotted all the shares paid for by small investors in its last public offer.

A small investor is someone who buys not more than ten thousand shares, if the shares in question cost not more than twenty naira per share. In the business of stocks, the rich ensure that they get richer, whereas the poor trying to help themselves are cleverly marginalised in such a way that it becomes very difficult for them to break away from the vicious cycle of poverty.

Another problem I have discovered on this issue of shares is the certificate verification process, especially if one did not have a CSCS account when the shares in question were purchased. One has to pay several visits to the stockbroker before such problems are sorted out.

The process is usually slow, time-consuming and exasperating. Sometimes, one is told that the share certificate she or he received from the company's registrar is fake! I had an unpleasant experience with Zenith Registrars which I want to relate to my dear readers.

Early in September this year, I went to Zenith Registrars at Prince Ajose Adeogun to find out why the certificate for two thousand, five hundred bonus shares has not reached me. In order to beat the time, I took an okada all the way from Marina to Zenith Registrars, despite the dangers associated with okada as a mode of transportation, and the fact that it was drizzling that very Friday. I got to the place around 2:48p.m.

The securitymen at the gate did not allow me to enter. I begged and pleaded but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I told them I have taken a risk to be there and that Zenith Registrars would lose nothing if I am allowed in. They rudely ignored my appeals, after more than thirty minutes, I told one of the men to help me get someone from the office to talk to me but they bluntly refused.

You know how Nigerians behave, when they have power, no matter how insignificant. Fifteen minutes later, one of them asked me to write down my name and my phone number. Tired and frazzled, I did. After about ten minutes, he emerged and gave me a form which I filled. He then told me that I should return in two weeks time to check whether my share certificate would be ready.

What really made me sad was that while I was at the gate, several well dressed members of staff of the company were coming in and going out while I was pleading with the gatemen to let me in. None of them bothered to pause and find out what was going on.

They all seemed too arrogant in their dapper suits, too busy with the "all-important" business of making money, to notice an ordinary Nigerian who just needed to be treated with a little humane consideration. Zenith Bank has won several awards. If it is true as it claims, that it has assets of over five billion dollars, then the bank is healthy at least by African standard.

Also, there are knowledgeable humane people working there, although there are some with unfriendly attitude to customers. I wish to remind the management of the bank, and of other corporate organisations, that banking and other human endeavours are about people.

The quality of any company does not depend on the size of its balance sheet and on the magnificence of its corporate headquarters alone but, more fundamentally, on the way it treats people. There is a tendency for those in the corporate world to forget, in their daily transactions, that without human beings the companies are nothing.

It is people, that is, the customers that made them what they are. Employees of such companies should not be carried away by intimidating office complexes, expensive cars and clothes, and forget to treat their customers, no matter how low some of them are in the socio-economic ladder, with dignity and respect.

As far as I am concerned, a single good human being is more valuable than all the glitter of the corporate world, because "man is the measure of all things.

Write Comment
Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Title:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Comments (1)