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By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it is working with the National Assembly on the review of the Investment and Securities Act (ISA) to ensure its revision and enactment into law possibly by end of 2022.
This was even as the Commission reiterated its commitment to stem the rising tide of Ponzi schemes in the country.
Its Director General, Lamido Yuguda, stated this in a virtual meeting in Lagos while fielding questions from newsmen on the outcome of the Capital Market Committee (CMC) 2022 meeting.
Yuguda noted that the ISA has passed the second reading at the House of Representatives and that with the House currently in recess, processes required to be done in terms of public hearing and other things will actually be done quite quickly.
“We appreciate the support of relevant committees of the National Assembly and the entire leadership in this process and we expect to have the ISA revised and enacted into the new law possibly by the end of this year”, he said.
He noted that the commission has been fighting a serious war against Ponzi schemes and added that investors should only deal with registered operators that have the registration of the Commission.
His words, “We have their list on the SEC website and we have always said that if you go to an operator or when an operator approaches you, you must confirm that he is a licensed operator with the SEC. We have our numbers on how to reach our offices in the zones and we have done a lot of sensitisation in terms of seminars, webinars all in an effort to discourage people from going to Ponzi schemes.
Unfortunately, a lot of people continue to patronise these Ponzi schemes, we have had cases that have been reported to us, our enforcement department and the police unit have been on many of these cases trying to resolve the cases that have been reported to us.
I will like to use this opportunity to say that it is not very difficult to recognise a Ponzi scheme and the people that go to Ponzi scheme many of them are probably aware that there is a type of risk that they are taking, because when somebody tells you that I will pay you a 1 per month on your investments, that means if you invest a million naira, every month you get 10 per cent of that which is N100,000.
If you see something like this, it is probably too good to be true. Because when you compound the annual rate of return, you find out that it is way higher than any decent investments can give you.
There are people who think they should be among the first people to go in and probably go out before it collapses but you may be taking a huge risk because you do not know if you are the first, maybe the 1000th and could be that it is your own money that could get trapped”.
