Dogara leads campaign to deepen Nigeria’s Capital Market

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has canvassed for the deepening of Nigeria’s capital market in order to enhance wealth redistribution.

Dogara said democracy can only function effectively and deliver on its promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when wealth is created and deliberately allowed to trickle down to the ordinary people, which he said can be achieved through the capital market.

According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Turaki Adamu Hassan, the Speaker expressed the views when he visited the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and to sound the closing gong to signal the end of the trading on its floor recently.

“A situation where a large chunk of the nation’s resources or capital is heavily concentrated in the hands of few chief executive officers, CEOs, would further widen the inequality gap, eliminate the middle class and plunge more people into abject poverty, thereby posing serious threat to the sustenance and survival of democracy,” Dogara said.

The Speaker had, in different fora, made it clear that the skewed distribution of wealth is even more worrisome because the flow of resources from Nigerian citizens to multinational companies operating in the country makes them rich.

“Unfortunately, these same companies, rather than invest in the NSE and grow the economy of Nigeria, would rather repatriate their profits 100 percent to their own countries without investing a dime back to the system,” he said.

Dogara assured that extra-ordinary measures would have to be taken by the parliament, and indeed all political institutions in the country to compel these large multinational companies with interests in oil and gas and telecommunications to get listed on the NSE.

“Foreign telecommunications companies who have been operating in the country since 2001 have not only been declaring huge profits, but are also listed in their countries’ stock exchanges, but they have continued to rebuff calls for them to list in the NSE, even though they make most of their profits here.