Emma Ujah
11 July 2008
Shareholders, yesterday, flayed the style of management of the Director-General (-DG) of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Musa Al-Faki over the consistent crash in the value of shares at the nation's capital market and asked him to resign.
The investors said the bearish stock market could be attributed to Al-Faki's comment in which he reportedly said that the market was being manipulated by some operators.
Speaking at the 28th Annual General Meeting of the Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc, in Abuja, leaders of various shareholders' associations took turn to express concern over falling share values at the stock market, with Bishop Goodluck Akpore saying "the SEC Director-General should resign. With the kind of comments he is making, he should resign."
Also speaking, Dr Umar Farouk said, "if the SEC is saying there is manipulation in the market it will scare investors. Last year, SEC D-G was saying he was going to remove the Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. These types of comment send wring signals to the market.
"You know SEC was also asking stockbrokers to recapitalise up to N1 billion. That in itself created instability in the market as there was panic on how the brokers had to raise funds to meet achieve that target. They began to sell their shares in large volumes and that was bad for prices of shares."
He, however, disagreed with Bishop Akpore's position that Al-Faki should resign his position as the chief executive of SEC, as according to him, the D-G had initiated the electronic dividend payment which would address the problem of unclaimed dividend.
Dr. Farouk urged the SEC boss to be careful in commenting on developments in the market as according to him, "we are not saying that the SEC should investigate or even sanction operators that do not play according to the rules, but that can be done without necessarily causing panic in the market."
Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc recorded a Profit After Tax of N139.794 million and declared a dividend of 25 kobo per share. Its share price stood at N27.04 at the stock market on Tuesday.
The company recorded a 9.60 total assets growth rate, moving from N6.425 billion in 2006 to N7. 042 billion at the end 2007 financial year.
In his statement, the Chairman of the company, Dr. Gboyega Oyebode disclosed that the total area under oil palm for 2007 remained stable at 9. 260 ha, with mature palm occupying 8.430ha, of the total area, while immature trees made up the rest 830ha.
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