Zaheera Ali: Meet the Commodities Exchange Commission boss who ‘doesn’t know the price of commodities’

Zaheera Ali (also Zaheera Baba-Ari) is getting ridiculed after a video of her Senate hearing surfaced online, Thursday.

In the video, Zaheera Ali, who is the Managing Director of Nigeria’s Commodities Exchange Commission, was asked to provide the price range of commodities. The question was posed by Senator Tolulope Odebiyi (APC, Ogun West).

Zaheera Ali either forgot the prices or didn’t know them as she couldn’t come up with the answers.

The Senate panel querying her then advised her to do her homework next time.

According to the commodities exchange’s website, Zaheera Ali is an experienced professional who holds a Master’s Degree in Language Arts and Communication from University of Ibadan and B. A. English from the University of Maiduguri. 

She is a member Institute of Capital Market Registrars (ACMR). She became a certified procurement officer (CPO) in procurement skills and techniques in 2009.  She is a member of the Procurement Professionals Association of Nigeria (MPPA).

Between 2002 and 2003, Zaheera Ali was the secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Technical Committee (ITC) on the conversion of Abuja Stock Exchange (ASE) to Abuja Securities & Commodities Exchange (ASCE).

In 2004, she became the Secretary of the Implementation Steering Committee (ISC) that saw to the actualization of the ASCE project which culminated in 2007 with the signing of an MOU with the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in China.

Ali has extensive training and first-hand experience on the operations of commodity exchange in Asia, the far East, South America, North America and Europe.

Before joining Nigeria’s Commodities Exchange Commission, Zaheera Ali worked variously in the academia, the media and in corporate marketing.