By Peter Egwuatu

Shareholders have berated the low attendance  of members  at Annual General Meetings, AGMs, just as they tasked the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC to make policy directing companies to repackage proceedings at meetings. The shareholders, under the aegis of Proactive Shareholders Association of Nigeria, PROSAN who spoke to Vanguard said “We have observed that less than 2 per cent of the shareholders of  quoted companies attend their companies’ AGM globally.”

The National Coordinator of PROSAN, Mr. Oderinde Taiwo, who spoke the minds of its members stated that one of the demands of sustainable good corporate governance is the disclosure of vital information to shareholders which are always discussed among other matters on the floors of the AGM of companies.

According to him “By implication if there is any way such proceedings can be assessed by these shareholders after such AGM , it will be a move towards positive direction. Therefore, we the members of PROSAN , the Nigerian representative in the World Federation of Investors, WFI do hereby suggest to the Director General of SEC to  make policy that will compel all the quoted companies in Nigeria to package the proceedings of their AGM in YouTube  for easy online accessibility of all the stakeholders.”

Taiwo advised that SEC, apex regulator of the Nigeria capital market should begin to think of ways of developing the market to meet global standards. In his words “ We believe that compelling companies to use YouTube at AGM  will also help the work of SEC  easier in the area of monitoring of activities of proceedings at meetings. In addition, all intended foreign investors can have first hand information about the growing capital market via this device.”

The shareholders’ group further stated that the continuous delay on the appointment ministers would continue to affect the capital market as investors need to know the policy direction of the economy.

According to Taiwo “Both foreign and local investors will only invest in a market if they know the policy direction. You can see that immediately the new president for Nigeria  emerged after the  2015 election, the stock market moved up and now the market has been going down because of the uncertainty caused by continued delay in the appointment of ministers and policies announcement.”