When our legislators complain that they’ve all too often been cast in the role of chief villains by the media and the public vis-a-vis members of the executive and judicial branches of government over the misrule of our country by our leaders, they have a point. As law makers they do make the difference between tyranny and democracy. Even then they do not compare with the executive, and arguably even with the judiciary, in their control of society’s resources and in their influence over public policy.

Yet if they are still condemned more than the other two branches of gover-  nment for the country’s misrule they must have themselves partly to blame. This is precisely because they make the difference between tyranny which is arbitrary and applies one rule for the rich and another for the poor, and democracy which is based on laws that are blind and serve the best interest of society.

Unfortunately the legislators’ record since 1999 suggests they’ve been more interested in attending to their own creature comforts than in making laws at all, never mind making sensible laws.

Last week they provided the media and the public with one more evidence that they care more about what is good for themselves and good for the well-connected than about public interest. This came in the form of a letter from the House Committee on Capital Market to the Securities Exchange Commission instructing the commission to reverse its recent sack of Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke as the Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

The NSE’s D-G had, in June, served SEC her notice of retirement amidst controversy about the extent of her culpability for the crash of the exchange in the context of the global financial meltdown that occurred in 2008. Several weeks after her notice, a bitter feud erupted between herself and the multi-billionaire mogul and president of the exchange, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, in which the mogul made very damaging allegations of fraud and mismanagement against the D-G. This led to the suspension of Dangote as president and her dismissal as its chief executive.

This was the dismissal which the House Committee on Capital Market has written SEC to reverse.

“The council,” said the House Committee, “should look into the notice of voluntary retirement by the former DG, NSE favourably by redressing the matter, also to allow her proceed on the terminal leave as stated in her voluntary letter of retirement.”

Her sack, the committee said, was “tantamount to using a legal means to effect an illegal action.” Really?

Even without  recent revelations by the external auditor, KPMG, of the terrible mess she left behind, it was surprising, if not shocking, that the House committee would in effect ask SEC to leave the lady alone to enjoy the fortunes she’s amassed at the expense of hapless millions of shareholders many of who lost their life-time savings, some even their lives, for betting on her Exchange’s now apparent manipulations of values of shares.

Long before KPMG’s revelations, the lady had made enough mess of the capital market and engaged in actions that were riddled with too many conflicts of interest to have been sacked, if not jailed, several times over. As I said on these pages in April 2003, her setting up of so-called Corporate Nigeria to mobilize – extort was more like it – money from the private sector for the re-election of President Olusegun Obasanjo that year was a criminal enough breach of our electoral laws and our Constitution to have earned her a sack and a jail.

In our land where those who make and execute laws are those who break them with impunity, the big lady, of course, got away with it.

She then proceeded, against all rules of decency and propriety, to chair Transcorp which the president – he too against all that is decent and proper - founded and promoted as Nigeria’s answer to big multinationals like Unilever.

Not done yet with the public which must have looked on in utter amazement at such brazenness, the lady reached out across our shores to set up a so-called Africans for Obama 2008, ostensibly to raise funds for then Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid as the first African-American ever to clinch the presidential ticket of any serious American political party.

Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign organisation denounced her initiative for the obvious reason that it violated America’s rules against foreign contributions to American candidates for the country’s public offices. Here at home, however, the lady once again got away with a mere slap on the wrist; there were noises from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission about the possibility of investigating her for raising over 100 million Naira on false pretences, but it all soon fizzled out and she carried on in her job as if nothing happened.

As if all this was not bad enough, the KPMG preliminary audit report of her tenure has since revealed a catalogue of mindboggling abuse of office by the lady. Among other things the report said she could not properly account for an average of 0.5% commission the Exchange collected on its transactions for five years up to 2007, amounting to over 65 billion Naira.

She had, the report also said, awarded herself and a select few obscene bonuses amounting to over 1.3 billion in 2009 alone. She had also spent hundreds of millions in overseas travelling expenses, mostly for herself and the select few in her charmed circle. “Our investigations,” said a presumably incredulous KPMG, “revealed that the total sum extended on BTO (business travel overseas) in 2008 prior to reclassification was N1.9 billion.”

And on and on and on.

The KPMG preliminary report truly beggars belief.  Yet I have it on good authority that when the final report is published these would look like starters in a five-course meal. It is not difficult to imagine what this size of profligacy and self-aggrandisement has cost the country in terms of, say, education and health for the poor.     

This is the report that the House Committee on Capital Market now wants the SEC to put aside. That they would even contemplate such an idea on her behalf shows how powerful she is. It also betrays a lack of respect by the legislators for the separation of powers as enshrined in our constitution for, by writing to SEC to reverse itself they have encroached on what is clearly a prerogative of the executive.

There are rumours that the lady has tried to use the good offices of the First Lady, Patience, to get her husband to put pressure on the SEC’s D-G, Ms Arunma Otteh, to reverse her decision but that President Goodluck Jonathan has refused.

If these rumours are true – and chances are they are, given the First Lady’s apparent high visibility in matters of state - the president is to be commended for doing the right thing. For, if he had intervened Nigeria would most probably have provoked the anger of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) which is to national securities commissions what FIFA is to national football associations.

Like FIFA, the IOSCO is very stringent about the operational independence of its member-organisations and like FIFA it is known to be quick in visiting retribution on any member country that interferes with the autonomy of any of its SEC. In his alleged refusal to intervene on the former NSE D-G’s behalf the president showed he had learnt his lesson from the debacle of his ill-advised dissolution of the Green Eagles for their terrible outing in the last World Cup.

Far from intervening on behalf of the sacked D-G the president should insist that she - and anyone else found culpable for the mess in the NSE – must be prosecuted to the full extent of their culpability.

As the plain-speaking publisher and eloquent columnist of Leadership, Sam Nda-Isaiah, said in effect in his column of October 25, “Lest We Forget; Where is Ndidi?” the lady should not be walking free on our streets after the untold hardship and misery she inflicted upon millions of hapless shareholders in the country.

We may not be America where, as Sam pointed out, Bernard Madoff who wrecked a similar havoc with the New York Stock Exchange was jailed for 150 years and the fortune he amassed at the expense of his victims seized. But surely to allow the lady to simply fade away to enjoin a quiet retirement after what she did to our stock engage can only be one more evidence that our leaders are not in the least serious about their oft-repeated declarations of war against corruption and mismanagement.   

Now that the NPLF has  completed  its  brief-By Mohammed Haruna