Infractions in the country’s capital market may soon become a thing of the past as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently deploying new technology that would enable it to monitor market operations real-time.
The Commission also stated that its willingness to support the federal government in bridging the infrastructure gap and attaining a $1 trillion economy remains a key priority in 2024.
At the post-Capital Market Committee (CMC) press briefing held in Lagos at the weekend, the Director-General of the SEC, Lamido Yuguda, said the Commission was investing heavily in technology infrastructure, communication and applications that would enhance effective supervision of the market.
According to him, the commission was poised to ensure that it remains at par or ahead of the market in the areas of technology deployment as a market regulator.
“The management has embarked on two major transformation programme to rebuild the Human Resources for attracting and retention of critical skills, as well as deploying a robust technology platform that would provide an efficient process of engagement in the market where returns and submissions from the market are seamlessly passed to the commission and the commission will quickly evaluate the returns and ensure compliance in accordance to SEC rules.
“The process has commenced, we have started to collegiate our infrastructure to ensure that we have more reliable availability because we have to do it on a data centre that is always available, then we will deploy robust communication and connectivity into the data centres and our various offices so that we will have seamless communication within the commission and the market.”
He pointed out that the SEC was also deploying new solutions within the commission to improve the efficiency of the staff.
Yuguda said the commission would focus more on rallying key stakeholders’ support for infrastructure development in 2024 to enable the government to meet its target of increasing the country’s GDP to $1 trillion by 2026 through the capital market.
He expressed optimism that the target is achievable through the instrumentality of the capital market.
“One of the most glaring problems of the country is the sorry state of a lot of our infrastructure and the goal of the commission in 2024 is to refocus attention on how we can galvanise capital market money into financing infrastructure. We have over 200 million people and are still growing. We have a lot of young people leaving; we have a lot of our other adults already out of the country.
“These people are helping these countries with a lot of good ideas. Some form of migration is necessary and beneficial. But if that migration is happening because people do not see opportunities here, then we must do something about it. I believe if we do the right thing, we will not only retain good talents but will also attract talents from other parts of the world to come and help build our country,” he said.
