By CHIOMA OBINAGWAM
HONOURABLE Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has said that the House is working with stakeholders to deepen the Nigerian capital market.
Dogara disclosed this during the Closing Gong event at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in Lagos last Friday. “We are working with stakeholders to deepen the capital market. We wanted to deepen investing public and we believe that the capital market will go a long way in enriching Nigeria. We’ll take the capital market seriously,” he assured.
He noted that the legislator is amending laws like ISA 2007, Companies and Allied Matters Act(CAMA), among others to ensure that it will be easy for punitive measures to be meted on those who commit infractions in the capital market.
He said that the main reason why there is dearth of confidence in the capital market was because the issue of infractions was not properly addressed.
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“Talking about the confidence of the investing public. For confidence to come back, we need to still deliver the message. One of the issues we must address, is the issue of infraction. In the past that was not the practice; we were not able to deal with the issue of infraction,” he stated.
Other measures to ensure the deepening of the capital market is to ensure that a reasonable part of companies that are successful in the country be listed on the capital market to ensure participation of Nigerians.
He said: “There’s no way we can get there if those major players are not listed on the market. Even if it means inventing some kind of legislative tools. Once the company is recognised, it is a cardinal requirement that they must be listed.”