The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has disclosed that Mrs. Ndidi Okereke– Onyiuke, the former Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) boss, had before her removal initiated the process of acquiring a loan of 20 million US Dollars from African Export – Import Bank for replacing the NSE trading platform , the same that the current leadership of the NSE has been able to arrange from the same supplier for just 10 million US Dollars.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has disclosed that Mrs. Ndidi Okereke– Onyiuke, the former Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) boss, had before her removal initiated the process of acquiring a loan of 20 million US Dollars from African Export – Import Bank for replacing the NSE trading platform , the same that the current leadership of the NSE has been able to arrange from the same supplier for just 10 million US Dollars.
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The NSE made the revelation today in a statement it said it wanted to issue speedily because Okereke-Onyiuke’s claims at the House of Representatives were “downright false and deserve quick refutation and rebuttal so that the investing and general publics as well as the public records do not retain such falsification.”
Identifying the May 20, 2011 judgment of Justice Idris Mohammed at a Lagos High Court, which Okereke Onyiuke claimed that the SEC only appealed the award of N500m to her in damages, SEC described this as entirely false.
“The appeal challenged both the substantive judgment as well as the award of N500m which was not sought for by Okereke–Onyiuke. Given the fact of this appeal therefore, her claim to being the DG of the NSE is clearly false.”
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With regard to the issue that the SEC and CBN approved what called the “Offer Prospectus” for “Private Placements” which have remained unlisted on the NSE, the statement also dismissed it as “entirely incorrect,” stressing that at no time did the SEC ever approve offer documents for vendors of private placements.
“We decry this recourse to deliberate falsification of facts by Okereke – Onyiuke under oath,” the SEC said.
“We invite her to deposit proof of this fabrication in the public domain. As a matter of fact, the SEC had placed a number of ‘buyer beware’ advertorials in key national daily newspapers advising the investing public that private placements were beyond the regulatory purview of the SEC.”
Turning to Okereke-Onyiuke’s claim that the SEC was not performing its market development responsibility, SEC said that was also untrue, as the sub-committee system which has been revitalized by the SEC is a market–wide development initiative which is intended to confront all areas of deficiency in the market.
“The recent investor outreaches in Sokoto, Port Harcourt and Kano as well as ongoing capital market awareness programmes in secondary schools and universities, and market wide capacity building in collaboration with sister regulatory agencies and multilateral financial institutions, are all instances of market development effort undertaken by the SEC,” it said.
“On the NSE’s trading platform, the SEC also dismissed Okereke Onyiuke’s claims as false. “What is material for us, from a regulatory point of view, is that appropriate machinery has been set in motion to overcome the challenges posed by the platform bequeathed by Okereke–Onyiuke through wholesale replacement. Contrary to the misinformation offered by her, the platform has a lifespan which lapsed in December 2011. It is not a renewable or upgradable technology like she claimed.”
With reference to the subject of succession planning, about which Okereke -Onyiuke claimed that she had a plan in place, the statement said it was common knowledge that she kept vacillating and delaying her exit despite having spent 10 years in office as Director General and 26 years in the employment of the NSE in senior managerial cadre. “The SEC intervention was the only way to cut short her reluctance,” the statement said. “It was the only [way] to put paid to the regime of unaccountability and financial recklessness which she had instituted to the point that the exchange was on the verge of bankruptcy.”
The Director-General of the SEC, Mrs. Arumeh Oteh, is on record as saying that Okereke-Onyiuke presided over the collapse of the Nigeria capital market through corruption, cronyism and mismanagement.
Since her departure from the NSE, it has been found that “Madam Stock” was not even qualified for the job, which she assumed in 1983, in the first place. Although she claimed to have earned a Ph.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY), this has been found to be false. Also false is her claim to have worked at the New York Stock Exchange for many years.
Okereke-Onyiuke was part of the grand and fraudulent conspiracy to sell 200,000 shares of Transcorp to President Olusegun Obasanjo while he was still in office and founding the corporation, part of the ethical emptiness that has led Nigeria into economic and political turmoil today.
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