Oscar Onyema emerges Capital Market Man of the Year 2020
Oscar Onyema, CEO, Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), has emerged Capital Market Man of the year, 2020. In a survey carried out by Businessday, Fund Managers, Stockbrokers, Market analysts and other market stakeholders gave various reasons for choosing the NSE CEO as Capital Market Man of the year 2020.
In the survey, BusinessDay posed the question: Who would you choose as Capital Market Man (Regulator) of the year 2020 and why? 70 percent of the respondents gave it to Oscar Onyema. Of this 70 percent, many picked the NSE CEO for piloting the affairs of the NSE and ensuring it ranked the world best in 2020 in terms of returns.
The efforts of the NSE under Onyema in the actualisation of the NSE demutualisation also helped Onyema’s choice. The NSE recently announced chief executives for emerging entities. they are group chief executive officer, Oscar Onyema; Nigerian Exchange Limited CEO, Temi Popoola; and NGX Regulation Limited CEO, Tinuade Awe.
The proactive measures taken by the NSE that contributed significantly to the early recovery of the market soon after a near crash at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic also
gave Onyema the edge.
In the wake of the pandemic in March, the market lost 18 percent, a development that put market operators and investors on the edge. But the market soon staged a rebound in May, helped by in-built structures put in place by the NSE.
The resilience the market demonstrated during the ENDSARS protest was traced partly to the NSE remote trading facility, which allowed uninterrupted trading during a period of crisis, and respondents took accounts of this in picking Onyema.
Also helping Onyems’s choice was the relative increase in the participation of retail investors in the market in 2020, which was attributed to the effective capital market literacy embarked upon by the NSE.
Onyema was also credited with supporting the SEC and playing a pivotal role in setting up the NG Clearing Limited, a central counterparty clearing house for the Nigerian financial market.
Coming second to Onyema as Capital Market Man of the year 2020 was former DG, SEC, Mary Uduk, for putting in place rules like guidelines for trading of Crypto Assets in Nigeria.
Koko Bola Onadele, managing director/ceo, FMDQ OTC plc, was also a contender as a regulator Capital Market Man of 2020 for being able to drive the volume and value of the bond market higher in 2020 than the previous year.
Anotable speculative fiction writer from the 1980s once noted in her ‘Diplomatic Immunity’ work: “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so for them.”
In Lois Mcmaster Bujold’s statement, 18 years after she first published ‘Diplomatic Immunity,’ Nigerians have come to recognise the potency of a unified voice collectively demanding for justice for their dead, whose bloods once splattered their country’s flag.
But they do that now, with much defiance—unafraid of bullets and unperturbed by the traumatic tales within the walls of a Nigerian police cell.
Following the ENDSARS protest— a movement by young Nigerians aimed at ending government oppression and police brutality, the youths have continued to insist on their rights to protest and demand accountability, despite obvious risks associated with confronting the country’s deadly security forces.
In anticipation of strong presence of riot police officers, protesters who had planned to occupy the Lekki Tollgate in order to inhibit its reopening, marched in smaller clusters on Saturday, February 13, 2021, a strategy to sustain the protest as security forces kept pushing back with numerous reinforcements.
The protesters had witnessed copious killings, oppression and now, no brutality could be brutal enough to make them back down.
“Come and arrest us,” screamed a hijab-wearing young woman who was later identified as Dabiraoluwa Adeyinka.
Leading at the vanguard, Adeyinka’s cluster appeared out of nowhere into a spot glazed with police officers demanding justice for the dead and that the toll plaza remain closed.
“We want to be arrested,” she added, stretching out her hands for cuffs, while the others in her team, through a song, queried how much blood the government would spill.
Some minutes after the group led by Adeyinka, another group, also led by a lady identified as ‘Light’ matched forward making the same demands.
The presence of the small groups unsettled the police who immediately jumped to action, arresting the unit leaders.
Why the protest?
The planned protest followed the decision of the Lagos State Judicial Panel to allow Lekki Concession Company to reopen the Lekki tollgate.
The tollgate has been shut since October 20, 2020, when armed soldiers shot and killed some peaceful protesters who gathered at the toll plaza.
The panel of enquiry, set up to look at the Lekki shooting incident, approved the reopening of the tollgate following a prayer by LCC counsel that its order would allow the company to repair all damages done.
This came after five members of the nine-man panel led by Doris Okuwobi voted in support of the reopening of the tollgate, while four persons rejected, stating that the report of the forensic examination on the incident that took place was yet to be disclosed.
Heavy security presence and arrests made
When the planned protest was announced in a bid to scuttle the planned resumption of normal activities at the tollgate, Hakeem Odumosu, Lagos State police commissioner, said the command would vehemently resist any form of ENDSARS protest as being planned by some groups of people.
Odumosu’s statement was reported two days prior to the planned protest and signed by the command’s public relations officer, Olumuyiwa Adejobi.
Then after, security operatives were immediately deployed to the protest ground a day before. A source told our correspondent that some police officers were deployed to major spots across the state and some arrests were also made.
The state security task force embarked on a show of force that began from Obalende through Lekki Phase One and then to Phase Two, in order to execute the order of the commissioner of police.
Some security operatives even slept at the tollgate and more were deployed as reinforcements leading to pockets of arrests of protesters.
Information gathered from the Lekki Tollgate showed about 17 protesters were arrested. The number later rose to 40, including a popular comedian Debo Adebayo, popularly known as Mr Macaroni; Dabiraoluwa Adeyinka, Damilare Adenola, Anjorin Joseph, Paul Terkuma, Anisere Sodiq, and a host of others.
However, while Mr. Macaroni was later released late in the evening, it could not be confirmed how many protesters also regained freedom at the time of filing this report, but the police source said they all had been granted bail.