Are stock registrars mere yahoo boys?

GLOBALLY, stock exchange platforms run like modernised ponzi, not because the sharing and stocking idea in itself was fraud-founded, but simply, because thieves-in-tuxedo call the shots at the helms, nearly everywhere. The whole abracadabra of stocking and sharing, bullish and bearish trading as it is today, is so unmitigated as a disaster, that just a banter on twitter between a bored-and-ignored Donald Trump–who is always seeking attention–and ever-too-serious Xi Jinping, will send the whole lie-numbers crashing across the globe. What well-rounded businesses with the right fundamentals and direction, go into depression, anytime, the owners go binging. Unfortunately, this monkey-business, somewhat rules global economies today and the May 25th edition of the Economist settled the incongruent relational when it wrote, “economies and stock markets do not always match up well”. I add, how can they, when economies are people’s reality and stock markets, their nightmare.

Trust Naija, the niceties that come with the abuses of the stocking system elsewhere, are completely ripped and discarded here. Na who get time for oyinbo mish, mish. Here, the stock market is an institutional pyramid of I-be-thief, you-be-thief. Maybe, the system was not originally designed to be a haven of tricksters ab initio. Until Ndi Okereke-Onyuike-led gang of suit-and-briefcase robbers, stole enough for the owners to see as her Igbo brethren would say, decent stories of committed investors were being applauded everywhere. Then they came with their come-and-see-America-wonder, sucked in, thousands of hitherto careful Nigerians, including yours sincerely, and sucked out, our hard-earned investments. Onyuike, by God’s mercy, will be 70, November 2nd, 2020. It is likely that drums would be rolled out on her behalf and possibly complete with a night of honour, where effulgent speeches would compete, painting her in the superlatives. That would be the voice of man. The damage she caused in the stocking business, alongside her kind like Erastus Akingbola and Cecilia Ibru, is procreating at a dizzying rate. Did they, amongst other crooks of that era of fake stock boom, not the models, for those running the show now? Yoruba will say, oka bimo sile, o bi oro, (baby snake is poisonously-loaded as the mother).

I’m confused regarding the right adjectival choice for us as a people. It would have to be either of docility or resilience, for Ndi, to just slip away into the shadows like that, with a heist, the size of her size! No, docility, doesn’t always have to be pejorative. A teachable and educable fellow, is deemed docile. If you behave well and do what people tell you to do, you are also counted docile. Somehow, those soup-pot lickers (aji obe je) of that era, just bamboozled us with some no-brainer about the global crash and why our monies must also disappear with it, blah, blah, blah, and we all moved on. Incredible!

Then, those rogues simply disappeared into the silent night, and since petty thieves running the brokerage, weren’t blind to what the so-called banking wizards were doing with fraudulent IPOs and other various insider abuses, in billions of Naira, they too, decided to be helping themselves to the toro kobo (piece-meal) investments of an average, brainwashed investors, particularly, the first timers. A childhood friend was one of them.

He was also the alarina (go-between) that got me into a failed 15-year romance with the stocking business, now with a narrow window of opportunity for divorce. While strictly conducting our messages of infatuation here and thither, he was helping himself to breast milk he assumed, was from a cash cow. But like their matriarch, he stole enough for me to see and the rest is for friendship lessons and histories.

If Ajax my friend was funny with my fund, the histrionics of the clowns, dubbed registrars, managing the looted portfolio, should be of epic embarrassment to a few decent men and women in the bear/bull business. Yes, men of honour must be in their midst. My Provincial Pastor (RCCG) runs one of the registrars’ firms.  The day I have verified reason(s) to doubt him, I will, without apologies. Our Daddy G.O is teaching us, to stand firmly against any form of sin, anywhere we see any, without being judgmental, so we don’t become condemnable before our Father-in-Heaven.

That is why I pity those rushing to nail Pastor Yemi Osinbajo for corruption, without evidence, though he won’t be without guile, to sustain long-running relationship with the kind of political circle around him, considering also, the political family that sired him. This is for another day.

So, I decided to pick the little left behind for me by my friend, Ibru (that woman, that family), Onyuike et al and it has been drama all the way with First Registrars, Meristem Registrars, EDC Registrars, GTL Registrars and Veritas Registrars, over e-dividend mandate, et al. Africa Prudential Registrars, is an act of its own. While others parade obsolete contact telephone numbers and automated email addresses, making one-on-one completely impossible, Prudential was so prudent that only those captured in its cubicle, could send mail messages in. For others who weren’t that brash, they simply ignored mails of over a year, save Datamax. This time, I have chosen to be docile and resilient at the same time, with Onyuike’s descendants.