Shareholders have urged the newly confirmed Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, to ensure the interest of minority shareholders is not jeopardised in the capital market by protecting them from multinationals.

Mr. Godwin Anono, Chairman Professional Shareholders Association:

Gwarzo should be able to transform the capital market. He should look into stock brokers who are contravening the laws and interested in collecting and spending money meant for investment where shareholders are at the receiving end. He should maintain unity between foreign investors in the capital market.

Shareholders

He should be able to set rules that will guide the market and make certain decisions on the management of the capital market.

There should be a check on operators and anyone found to be defaulting any of the rules should be punished accordingly. He should be able to ensure that decisions taken by the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting are actually implemented into the system. He has a lot to do.

At the venue of the AGM, there should be SEC representatives, representatives from the registrars, the auditors and other agencies representatives.

Mr. Sunny Nwosu, National Coordinator of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN): Gwarzo is also a professional, he should ensure that the shareholders are not short changed because the responsibility of SEC is to protect the interest of shareholders.

They should also go back and review the rules of the capital market whereby the multinationals are trying to buy up all the shares from minority shareholders. They should review it. It does not make sense that they make Nigerians to patronize them for profit making and that profit equitably shared between Nigerians and the technical parties.

You can see Unilever, they want to take one billion shares from Nigeria at the hike of the price to pay and yet these are the Nigerians they depend on to patronize their product. It is s very important for SEC to go back to drawing board.

We should open our eyes and SEC should help us, if Nigerian Stock Exchange is not willing to help us to stop what is going on. Again, Gwarzo must not condone the back door way of doing things.