MR. BONIFACE OKEZIE, Chairman, Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria,
My stake on this matter is that no issuing house can do any form of allotment without the knowledge and the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC. So if SEC approves the allotment, and based on the approval, the registrar went ahead with the issuing of certificate of allotment, there is nothing wrong with that, and in that case they cannot be penalised.

But in the situation at hand, the questions to be asked should be: In the share allotment, did the company receive the money? And if the company received the money, why should the regulator penalise the registrar, because the registrar on their own cannot pay a shareholder because they don’t own the company.

But it is the ratio or the number of people who applied at the end of allotment, that the registrar is to collate the figures, and then passes them to the issuing houses while the issuing houses will communicate the company to do allotment. And the role that SEC plays in the allotment process is to approve and if the regulator approves it, they will come back to the registrar. At this point, the registrar can begin to distribute certificates based on the figure they arrived at during their collation. That is the number of people that applied.

If all these things are properly observed and yet the regulator withdraws the registrar’s registration, the question one will ask is; was there no any issuing house which took that company to the market? If the issuing house is there, then who approved the allotment, did they seek the approval of SEC?
And if they did not seek the approval of SEC, then the issuing house should be penalised and not the registrar, except where the registrar gave certificate to people who did not pay or apply for the allotment.

OYEDELE TAIWO
I heard about the withdrawal of the Sterling Registrar’s certificate on Wednesday and I was in their office to confirm what really the situation of things was. But when I got to their office, they were still operating and attending to their customers as usual.
I will tell you that from what I saw when I got to the office, the ban on their operation as reported by some papers and carried by some investors was not holding.

Not only did I go there to confirm, I was there together with other shareholders to transact deals as regards some of the companies they work for. And if there was a ban, there must be a sign to indicate that and not only to the staff but also to the customers, to ensure they don’t gain access to the office. Though it is possible they might have resolved their matter before I got there.