Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission Ms. Arunma
Oteh yesterday opened the Pandora’s box at a legislative hearing when
she accused the House of Representatives’ capital market committee
chairman Herman Hembe of asking her for a bribe of N44 million. Oteh, who the lawmakers on Wednesday accused of large-scale fraud, fired
back yesterday, saying Hembe made two different demands for money,
totalling N44 million. READ MORE
On Wednesday, at the first session of
the hearing, Hembe told Oteh that documents available to the committee
showed she used N850,000 for feeding on a day alone, and also spent N30
million on hotel bills.
Yesterday, Oteh reeled out her own
accusations against the lawmakers, labelling the hearing as a kangaroo
court that was worse than the atrocities committed by the late Ugandan
leader Idi Amin.
She said last year, Hembe collected from
SEC monies and a business class ticket to travel to the Dominican
Republic for a conference but did not travel and never returned the
money.
“Yesterday you had implied that as a
regulator, that by having people on secondment from the private sector,
it could undermine the capacity of the regulatory functions of the
commission,” she said.
