Brokers urged to join forces in regulating regulators

A leading stock broker, Mazi Okechukwu Unegbu, Chief Executive Officer of Maxifund Nigeria Ltd has called on stockbrokers and newly inducted authorized dealing clerks to commit energy towards regulating the regulators in the course of their business.

Unegbu who made the call recently in Lagos during the induction of newly qualified stock brokers said that in the face of innovations driven by rules and regulations, the question that would always be of concern to people impacted by market regulations is, “who regulates the regulators?”

He called on dealing members of the exchange and the newly authorized dealing clerks of the NSE to join the vanguard of whistle blowing on their bosses and even the regulators.

In his words: “You must always be bold enough to challenge the regulators. Challenge your boss where he is wrong because when dealing members sound the whistle, the regulators will be alert to correct the anomaly before it gets out of hand.

“You must be a whistleblower, blow the whistle, nobody will kill you, … “whistleblowing will make the SEC and the NSE be at alert and correct any breach before it gets out of hand.

Unegbu expressed confidence in the national assembly for its effort towards enacting a law on whistleblowing, even as he urged brokers to take whistleblowing to the next level even against their bosses.

The Maxifund CEO said that the entire market community is looking up to the newly qualified members of the exchange for their immense contribution to the market development and through products diversification, market depth and regulatory direction, product innovation among others.

“Challenge your regulators, but you must do this with a lot of facts because you cannot challenge your regulators and go free.”

He reminded the brokers that whistleblowing or boss/regulators regulation should be done with the purpose of making their works easier for them otherwise the resultant consequences should be difficult for them to bear.

Unegbu recalled that the NSE has enjoyed generations of stockbrokers, from pre-analogue to analogue a, pre-digital to digital brokers who now trade on- line real time, emphasizing the developmental stages of the dealing members of the exchange and the market.

He, however, warned that in the face of innovation and digitalization “Don’t boast too much about your innovations and activities, because those who make noise about their innovations, if you go behind them you will find out that a lot of things are getting wrong.”