President Umaru Yar'Adua has called on capital market operators to fund industrial development and not limit investments to equity trading. Trade on the Nigerian Stock Exchange has soared over the past two years in the wake of a wave of consolidation in the banking sector and a growing global appetite for exposure to Nigeria's fast-growing oil economy.

"The Nigerian capital market should be in the vanguard of resuscitating our real sector, whose productive assets are either largely worn out or require expansion to spur growth in GDP and job creation," Yar'Adua said at the commissioning of a new automated trading system. Nigerian market capitalisation has grown six fold to 8.42 trillion naira ($70 billion) in four years, boosted in large part by bank share offers.

Yar'Adua also called on financial institutions to redirect long-term money to infrastructure such as roads, power and transport to help the government address a funding gap that he has pegged at between $6 and $9 billion per year.