Melvin Onwubuke
The Securities and Exchange Commission said that it has intensified strategies for reducing the level of unclaimed dividends by investors on the capital market.
After holding a three-day investor clinic in Yobe State to address investors’ complaints, the apex regulatory body entrusted with regulating and developing Nigeria’s capital market disclosed this to reporters on Thursday.
The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Zonal Office in Kano, Mr. Danladi Mohammed, has disclosed that a consultation for investors with unclaimed dividends was organised by the SEC together with the Gombe State Investment and Property Development Company.
Mohammed said the three-day exercise was aimed at creating awareness and enlightenment on e-dividend, dematerialization of shares certificates, and direct cash settlement payment system, among other initiatives.
He said, “The initiative is one in a series of programs, and strategies toward reducing the level of unclaimed dividends which stood at N190bn in August 2023, by creating awareness, particularly in the regions; to make the investing public come forward to take what rightfully belongs to them – This is one of the key objectives of the Capital Market Development Master Plan 2015 to 2025.”
Recall that the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lamido Yuguda, while briefing the members of the House Committee on Capital Market and Institutions on the overview of the capital market and its importance to the Nigerian economy, intimated that the commission had made several efforts in the past and has a lot of strategies and measures in place to tackle the rise in unclaimed dividends.
