By William Jimoh

CHIEF TIMOTHY ADESIYAN, Executive President, Nigeria Shareholders Solidarity Association (NSSA)

The regulatory authorities are trying their best, but one thing I will tell you about Nigerians is that immediately a law is made, some people will sit down to study the loopholes and will start taking advantage of weak points in it.

I tell you with all sincerity that with what the regulatory authorities are currently doing, they mean well for the market, investors and the Nigerian economy. Most especially to ensure that the capital market take its rightful position in the scheme of things in Nigeria.

We are in a moment in the market where anything that can be used to sanitise the market must be a welcome ideal.  This is because we have a lot of cases whereby as the regulators and other concerned persons are trying to grow the market to ensure that it fully recover from the downturn, there are some unscrupulous elements that are always trying to go through the wrong channels to sabotage the effort of the good ones. Therefore, all hands must be on deck to ensure that their efforts to impair the improvement that we all admire and look forward to is frustrated.

So, if any crime control agency of the government is invited and they are going to do a good job, at least to bring sanity to the market, it is a welcome idea.

I talked briefly about the effort of the regulators the other time; they are really trying their best. If you look at the market today, you find out that they have done a lot of good work to promote the development of the market and to ensure that investors’ confidence is regained. You can see that investors’ confidence is gradually, but steadily coming back.

You can see the way the prices of the shares are increasing, and you can see how the index is rising on daily bases. And those are good indications that we as minority investors and others have growing confidence in the fact that tomorrow will be better in the capital market.

If you consider for instance, the introduction of the OTC market you will find out that it has been very helpful towards improving the market performance. Another progress we have seen in recent time is reduction in transaction cycle. The whole transaction now take just three days and even in some cases reduced further.

MR ROTIMI BLAICE, Minority Shareholder

On my part, I think the attempt by the regulators to bolster activity in the market is a step in the right direction. It is very good for us as investors because encourage diversification of portfolio, as well as increase in returns.

It is also good for the market and the economy. Like we all know, the capital market’s contribution to the economy now is far from what it ought to be, and to get to where we should be, we will need to continue to move forward.

To me, doing everything possible to improve attractiveness of the market is the most important issue that needs to be focused on now. Ordinarily, if you are in business, you need patronage and as a good business person, you will always be looking for ways to ensure that you retain your customers. You will also want to increase your sales by introducing more products, which will bring more customers. The same applies to the Nigerian Stock Exchange. One of their major tasks, which is very cogent to the development of the market, is boosting the capitalisation. There is a lot of wisdom in emphasising it at this particular time.