By Providence Obuh

The Securities and Exchange  Commission (SEC) recently announced that its Director-General, Ms Arunma Oteh, has stepped down.

Despite her passion and implementation of reform measures driven by the vision to transform the Nigerian capital market into world class that will drive development and make Nigeria one of the most attractive investment destination, in this interview shareholders hold different views about her personality. Excerpt:

Secretary, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN) Mr. Adebayo Adeleke: She came in when the market was extremely down and she also left when the market was still down. Her tenure was not eventful for the shareholders. The truth is that the shareholders did not get much value during her tenure because of her misplaced priority. She did not protect the interest of the shareholders or the investors especially in the banking restructuring exercise carried out by the then CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi. What ever the case may be we wish her all the best in her future endeavours.

To judge a regulator by the standard of performance in what the person is regulating, she came in when the market was down and left when the market was down so where is her performance. If you also want to judge a regulator by how much of regulatory framework she has put in place, that I cannot lay hands on, that her first tenure this and that happened to the capital market, but rather a hard situation were companies where people have invested were nationalized over night and investors loss 100 percent of their investment. Am talking about Afri Bank, Bank PHB and other banks that were abridged for one reason or the other. There was absolutely no body to protect the interest of shareholders. CBN protected the interest of depositors and NDIC protected the interest of depositors SEC under Arunmah Oteh failed woefully to protect the interest of investors which is the primary aim of SEC. So I don’t see anything that she has achieved.

Certain things were not properly done during her tenure, instance is the Transcorp Hotel Plc offer, the document was approved by SEC and that approval I think something went wrong with it

Shareholders Activist, Alh. Gbadebo Olatokunbo: The truth is bitter, because she was upright and she met a lot of mess on the table which she tried to clear and make the capital market what it is today, so many people do not like her and am not one of them. The capital market crashed because people were not disciplined and a lot of rules were not enforced but on the other side, other stakeholders are doing what they like. Arunma Oteh period happens to be the best period so far that I have ever witnessed in the capital market because I have been around for over 30 years so I should be able to have a say. Irrespective of what ever anybody would say about her, she corrected a lot of mistake. People are happy because she is leaving, they think they can continue business as usual and I pray that doesn’t happen.

One of the attributes and which nobody can deny her is the enforcement of the rules and the proactive attitude of SEC to the market, those two things you can not deny her, she seek the enforcement of the rules and was proactive to the market, she came and met some mess and she made it right, people are looking in that direction, the capital market would have been in mess today and so many other things. The things she did in the capital market alone goes along way because when there is discipline things will go the way they suppose. All the allegations leveled against her by a particular committee, where are the findings and yet they say she is not qualified, I don’t want to recon with them. She was bold enough and she challenged them, so decided to destroy her. If she is not qualified the Federal Government cannot give her that job.