By CHINEDU IBEABUCHI

The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria, ICSAN, has called for strict sanctions against individuals or parties found guilty of any offence in the scandal that rocked the public hearing on the capital market by the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market.

Speaking at a workshop to mark the issuance of licences to its members, President and Chairman of Council, ICSAN, Mr. Olatunde Busari, said sanctioning individuals found to be guilty will help restore public confidence in the market and improve the practice of corporate governance in Nigeria.

According to him, the recent national disgrace that played itself out between the House Committee on Capital Market and the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the process of the probe into the stock market crisis must be investigated and all the guilty parties dismissed and blacklisted from holding public positions in Nigeria.

He said: “The Federal Government must also release and implement the reports and recommendations of previous committees of inquiry such as the Power Project Probe of 2008, the recent Petroleum Subsidy Management Probe, to mention but a few. Only this step will restore the respect and dignity of public offices that have been bastardised by greed, corruption and unguarded spell of indiscretion.

“We must imbibe the culture of transparency and honesty in private and public offices for Nigeria to step into the pride of place that we all dream of.”

He said the various arms of government must function effectively to check each other in a bid to curb the prevalent corruption in the system.

“The objective of ICSAN is to ensure excellence in the practice of corporate governance and public administration and, it is for this reason that the body calls on all the arms of government to act as an effective watch-dog on each other in the true spirit of federalism, separation of powers and checks and balances,” he noted.

In its own part, Busari said ICSAN has adopted a method of checking mediocrity through the issuance of practice licences to practising members to sanitize and control them in the discharge of their duties.