Legislators may prolong review of Capital Market laws

Bonny Amadi, Lagos

Indications have emerged that the National Assembly may spend more years amending the Capital Market obsolete laws, thereby retarding developments expected to be driven by the expected new rules. Pointer to this emerged when the chairman, Senate Committee on Capital Market, Senator Bukar Mustapha, visited the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), where he had the rare opportunity of sounding the exchange’s closing gong.

The Daily Times recalls that the Nigerian market in recent years has seen more of visits from the executive and legislative arms of the government, yet less action has trailed such visits. The latest bill expected to be endorsed by the Federal Government, following final approval by the National Assembly, is the demutualisation bill, of which the waiting game has been on.

Meanwhile, Chairman, Senate Committee on Capital Market, Bukar Mustapha, on a visit to the NSE, assured of the Senate’s commitment to the growth of the Nigerian market through amending obsolete laws of the market.

The same assurance was given by former chairman, House Committee on Capital Market, Hon Yakubu Dogara, now the House speaker, when he visited the Exchange as the House Committee Chairman and as speaker, yet, the amendment process continues to drag. Mustapha, in his remark a during his visit to the NSE, said that for the equities market to take its pride of place in the domestic economy, laws guiding market operations needed to be amended to make the market a better place than what it used to be.

He said: “Particularly, the issue of market Demutualisation will be looked into, the Investment Securities Act (ISA), the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), amongst others, needed to be amended to up the game in the market. “We need to build the market. Presently it’s not playing the role it ought to play in financial services.

We have an infrastructural deficit which can be addressed if the capital market is well positioned to take its pride of place.” On issues preventing foreign investment from coming to the local market, Mustapha noted that the capital market can work with other global agencies to address it frontally. On July 8, 2016, Dogara, on the floor of the NSE, assured the capital market that the National Assembly remains committed to its deepening.

The Speaker, it would be recalled, was a member of the House Committee on the near collapse of the capital market of the 7th Assembly, that recommended N100million compensation to shareholders of nationalised banks, which has also remained in the cooler many years after. “For me, there is nothing Hon Dogara can do now, the recommendation is with the executive and they are now expected to act on it hence government is a continuum”, a retail investor said.