By Obi Nwakanma
The House Committee Chair on the Capital Market – and I do not know if this is not a duplication of functions that should normally be under the Financial Services committee or if it’s a sub-committee under the general rule, but nonetheless – Herman Iorwase Hembe, is looking to be L’Homme fatale and nothing more, in the drama playing out at the chambers of the House this past week.

And the drama is indeed still unfolding. The committee of the House investigating Ms. Arunma Oteh, Director-General of the Nigerian Security and Exchange commission had summoned her to a public hearing.

The house inquiry was anything but routine; it was to basically investigate allegations of corruption and incompetence at the apex regulatory institution of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Ms. Oteh of course sensed that what was afoot was a lynch mob; that there was dishonourable intention in the chamber, and that such intentions and aforethought ill-will against her was most likely to turn the honored confines of the Committee room into a chamber of scurrility and dishonesty.

With quite unexpected but calculated thrust, and in such a rather sweet twist; sweet to anyone with a sense of dramatic irony, Ms. Oteh turned the table on Herman Hembe, Chair of the House Committee investigating her, and member representing Konshisha/Vandekiya in the Federal House of Representatives.

Arunma Oteh basically described the committee trial of her as nothing short of a “kangaroo court.” In her very words, Ms. Oteh declared:“Can you explain to me why, if our market, if the Equities market peaked at N12.6trillion in March of 2008 and then declined to a bottom of $32.9billion by February 2009, that what you have decided is in the interest of Nigeria, is to try and undermine the regulator and undermine my person.

Chairman House Committee on Capital Markets, Hon. Herman Hembe and Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, Ms. Arunma Oteh

You have questioned my competence, you have made frivolous accusations of me, of having done things that compromised myself and compromised the integrity of the organisation of which I am the CEO.Please is this the House that we all know that gives people fair hearing?

My issue is, I question your credibility in doing this. I am questioning your credibility.” Nothing even in better words can detract from the fierce assurance of Ms. Oteh, for she says, not even in Idi-Amin’s Uganda could such blatant lack of juridical transparency be tolerated. I’m not sure that Herman Hembe, who is listed

on the House of Representatives Website as a Lawyer, well, with no clear indication of when or where he had legal training, had much to say about the events that soon unfolded or the damning accusation which the SEC Director-General leveled against him.

But it soon became clear that Mr. Hembe had rattled a different caliber of snake in Arunma Oteh, a 1987 graduate of Computer Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she was summa cum laude, that is First class, and a Harvard MBA, with a professional path that had taken her from Center Point, the Investment bankers in Lagos to the African Development Bank, ADB which she joined in 1992 and where she rose to Vice President of Corporate Management before her appointment to the Securities and Exchange Commission as chair.

It must be seen that Mr. Hembe was not dealing with a spring chicken, but a thoroughbred professional woman who had all the excuse and temerity to protect her professional privileges and her reputation from obloquy and from the scurillity of dishonorable intentions.

She made bold her rather startling claim of corruption against an elected member of the Federal House of Representatives. She was open and fearless and refused to be cowed into silence. Ms. Oteh detailed a scenario of shocking malfeasance.

In her claims, she is being subjected to what amounts to legislative inquisition because she refused to fork up – excuse the pun – N5 million in cash requested of her office from the proxies of Mr. Herman Hembe on Tuesday March 13, 2012.It was neither the only request nor the only time Mr. Herman Hembe and proxies had made such questionable demands.

Aside from requesting that SEC make a “contribution” of N39 million towards the on-going public hearing of the House committee, Hembe had also at some point abused the privileges of his position by collecting “estacode” and what Ms. Oteh described in rather vague terms as “other travel allowances” from the Security and Exchange Commission to attend a conference on capacity enhancement for Capital market regulators in the Dominican republic –a trip which he neither makes nor accounts for. He did not return tax payers money. It amounts to embezzlement.

But it opens up an even more serious question. Why should public institutions be forced or blackmailed to pay for the official and unofficial expenses of public officials with tax payers money?

Why should, if Ms. Oteh’s allegations are true, Mr. Hembe be allowed to continue to sit in the chambers of the House to continue the charade of legislative work? This is the matter for the ethics committee of the House, and thereafter, the police. Nigerians have had much reason to distrust the integrity of elected members of its legislatures.

Yes, Ms. Oteh is profoundly correct: we are trying to build a new nation on the values of democracy. Democracy does not work without integrity and transparency. That is why it is important that the House Ethics committee begins to investigate claims against Mr. Herman Iowarse Hembe for possible unethical conduct, and if found lacking in the sworn duty to uphold the honour of his obligation, stripped of his privileges and handed over to the courts.

That is the value of democracy. But Nigerians do see that these institutions that should secure the system – the courts, the police (including its anti-corruption arm, the EFCC) – have remained inefficient and complicit in the maintenance of national corruption at the highest realms of state.

One example comes to mind about how Nigeria continues to work: while Mr. Jefferson, the Louisiana Congressman accused of manafiki with Nigeria’s former Vice-president goes to jail in America for his roles, Atiku Abubakar walks about in freedom in Nigeria.

While those accused in the Halliburton bribery scandal are arraigned, prosecuted and sent to jail in the US, those with whom they did the business in Nigeria live happily ever after. Were he not arrested for breaking UK laws, and were he to be in Nigeria, James Ibori would be about strutting free in magnificent brashness. That is why Nigeria is iniquitous and going in circles.

Though we shout about it, official tolerance for public corruption is impudent and unparalleled. We have created the cult of “bigmen” – those above the law of the land, against whom nothing can happen. And even in this matter, we do not say Ms. Oteh is right, for she too must account for how she spends N850,000 daily, allegedly for food and much more for hotel accommodation on tax payers money.

There has to be stricter guidance on how public institutions spend tax payers naira. There has to be consequence.