Agenda Papers Editorial: Why will Nigerians continue to fall victims of ponzi scheme all the time–By Austine Uche-Ejeke

The news of yet another quick money business gone sour rented the air last week as thousands of Nigerians cry out of fleeced hard earned money.

This time around it is relatively unknown and unheard of CBEX and its crooked agents of darkness depriving people of their money in the guise of quick return on investment.

As at the last count a whooping sum of N1.3 trillion has developed wings and flew away within a couple of months just like that. Also many people are critically ill with high blood pressure in various hospitals as a result of pain of the loss. If care is not not taken many lives will be lost or some may even take their own lives considering the amount of money of lost.

Sketchy details of the enormity of the loss indicate that some people lost as much as N200 million, N300 millions, thousands of dollars if not more.

Imagine in this period of economic hardship is what people will just fritter their money away just like that.

Now the question is where should the blame go. Should the blame go to the dubious company or Nigerians who wanted to invest their money and have a quick turn over within a couple of weeks.

The annoying aspect of all these is that Nigerians have failed to learn a lesson with all these schemes that keep on cropping every now and then.

Few years ago it was MMM that came into the country and swindled Nigerians of their billions. As we talk those money have not been recovered upon all the threats and promises of the government to get the money back to the owners.

The point must be made here that most people who fall victim to this financial scam are those we describe as greedy, gullible and lazy with the get rich quick mentality. Greedy in the sense that they want to reap bountifully without asking some critical economic and investment questions. Gullible on its own here connotes that they are simply foolish that they can’t read in-between the lines to know the tactics of a potential fraudulent business venture. Lazy in the sense that most people that fall victims of this mess are people who don’t want to work but to depend on cheap money of investing 1% to reap 50% in a couple of days, weeks or months and without them asking how on earth is that possible.

Should we then blame Nigerians for this and the answer may be a no. Why do we say so. The reason is that we have institutional financial regulators like CBN who are supposed to be on top of their game monitoring and clamping down on any financial malfeasance.
We also have security agencies like the DSS, police, EFCC etc. What is the work of these security operatives if they cannot sniff out information on this kind of illicit transactions.

Attestations have it that CBEX had his office in the boisterous city of Ibadan. So are they telling us that they never heard of the activities of the company, movement of people in and out of the company complex.

Another question is what payment channels were the company using in their day to day transactions.Were they not making use of our banks or financial houses to siphon this money. So nobody could detect their activities until they had their fill and cleaned out.

As it is now there is a school of thought making waves that there could be a deliberate complicity by CBN, security agencies with crooks like CBEX to do their illegitimate business, fleece Nigerians of their money and varnish. Could it be that they have their own cut or percentage and thereafter bamboozle Nigerians that they will go after the perpetrators, apprehend them and return back their money. How many of such promises have been fulfilled up to this moment. We are talking about a homognous amount of N1.3 trillion and you imagine their cut if it is true.

In as much as we sympathize with all those who lost their money to CBEX and other Ponzi schemes it is our sacred duty to warn Nigerians to be wary of any business venture that looks too sweet to be real. The adage that nothing good comes easy still stands up till this moment. It is only the foolish and lazy that will think that a business venture will return 100% of your investment within days or weeks without you asking what they are doing to make it possible.

As the nunc dimitis of CBEX will gradually die down in a few weeks time other smart Alec are somewhere plotting another scheme to unleash on Nigerians and dupe them of their money.

Ponzi scheme attachment and dependency can be likened to Nigerians hard heartedness and foolishness of scooping fuel from a fallen petrol tanker with its attendant explosion and burning to ashes those who go for the fuel.

Another ponzi scheme may surface in a few months or years time and the gullible, the foolish, the greedy and the lazy will rush and as usual have their fingers burnt.

The government if they are serious should start with this CBEX fiasco by rounding up ÇBN officials, financial regulators, security agencies who ought to have detected this and nip it in the bud but did absolutely nothing.

With the government setting example to any colluding, complicit or incompetent official in this CBEX case, perpetrators of this kind of heinous financial crime will think twice before hatching and executing another ponzi scheme to rip off Nigerians.

*Austine Uche-Ejeke, a public affairs analyst and publisher of Agenda Papers wrote vide eaustineuche@yahoo.com