Lagos — The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms Arunma Oteh has taken a critical over view of the nation's capital market operations regretting that capital market regulation in the country has been weak especially in the past two years.

Ms Oteh therefore said the effort of her leadership of the capital market regulatory body would be geared towards strengthening market regulation. She said she would strive at ensuring that all windows of sharp practices were shut.

Oteh who made these disclosures weekend during an interactive parley with stakeholders in the capital market said the major impediment in stemming sharp practices at the capital market remains increasing the depth of investors' education as this would ensure their resolve to protect their investment rights.

"We recognize our weakness as an organization and we are already takings steps, I am sure that over the last few months you have seen that we have been more effective and more efficient in terms of our enforcement. My colleagues before I assume duty have been working really hard without the necessary tool that they need and one of the things that I ma committed to ,is to do my utmost best to make sure that we have the tool, because what we are doing is extremely important for the country"

Continuing, SEC Director General said, "As part of our reform agenda at the SEC to transform our capital market, we will be placing a lot of emphasis on investors' education and public enlightenment. We will take our public enlightenment programme across the nation and meeting particularly with the investors, so that we can hear directly from investors, of some of the challenges they have been forced to manage in the last few years. So that we can also share with them what their rights are, as investors".

She disclosed further that SEC would soon enhance its web sites so that investors can easily table their complaints directly and much more efficiently through their email address. She maintained that that through the new initiative, complains could also be passed through SEC's offices scattered across the country including, Kano, Kaduna, Portharcourt, Onitsha, Maidugiri, Ibadan and Lagos,

She said SEC will increase the capacity of all its offices to ensure preparedness of the commission in an on going basis continue to be available to an average investor as well as respond to issues which the average investor has to face.

"We need to certainly enhance the disclosure standard, there has to be more transparency in our country and we need to start thinking about some of the things that happens in other jurisdictions where directors has to understand that their roles and responsibilities so that they can collectively feel liable for ensuring that there is much more transparent reporting by the companies that they are on the board", she added.

Oteh said that in an effort to ensure that greater transparency return to the market, SEC has been working with the national accounting standard board, which has accepted that adoption the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) remains the best accounting practice.

"What we want to do, is that in addition to making sure that the companies in our country reports with the best of practice standards that we are also able to attract further investors. What we want is for our capital market to be the first post of call for us as Nigerians and for international investors, and therefore issues involving disclosures are based on the principles of utmost transparency at every level", she further explained.

Oteh disclosed that SEC has a the mandate of investments and Securities Act (ISA) as well support of minister of finance and minister of state for finance being its supervising ministry. Also she maintained that the commission has the President support as well as that of the national assembly. "Even in the short while I have been in this role the senate committee on capital market and house committee on capital market have both invited us to try and understand the issues that we have raised. To make sure that they partner with us and support us to get everybody recognize this important function of the capital market"

She said that even as the African Development Bank recent report showed that 70 percent of most Nigerians live on less than one dollar a day, the money that was invested in the capital market and lost in the last two years could have helped in improving the living standard of many Nigerians.

"Today investor's confidence is completely eroded and if we must earn the trust of the average investor and we need to ensure that stakeholders transform themselves in order to respond to the issues that have impacted the market in the last two years. We at the SEC commit to that. The immediate priority of the reform agenda is to restore investor's confidence, as well functioning capital market cannot exist or flourish without investors .this is because capital Market thrive on investors interest in investment opportunities", she revealed.

Ms. Oteh said banks should deploys the service of consultant to ensure that adequate business growth and sustainability seminar is consistently made available to MSME's as this will ensure that they are consistently on the right path of growing their businesses which remains the engine room of the nation's real sector development.