The tale usually follows a telling trajectory: the pledge of magnificent networking and the promise of mouthwatering profit. People are asked to invest huge sums of money and rake in loads of profit after a relatively short time or to invest a sum and get others to invest and watch their profits explode in no time.
Because those who sell these schemes are master sophists, their honey-coated words usually attract and ultimately entrap the naïve and the unwary. They get people to part with their life savings and earnings.
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Those at the forefront of these schemes who promote their interests and nothing more by asking people to invest usually live lavishly.
Meanwhile, some of their victims die of high blood pressure and other health challenges proceeding from the anxiety over the loss of humongous sums of money.
For as long as these phony business promoters continue to hold sway and ensnare Nigerians, the sense in which Nigerian regulatory authorities have failed will only grow stronger.
It is true that the country is going through an economic crisis. Children and their families have been pushed to the precipice; cut off from quality living by the extortionate costs of the basics that make life a joy.
It is also true that while Nigerians live a living death, the government appears overwhelmed by what is happening.
The lethal combination of economic difficulties and the government’s inertia has provided a fertile ground for all manners of fraudsters to test their frightening schemes. A result is a swelling number of Nigerians who because they have been duped themselves have set up schemes to dupe others.
Nigerians have been left at the mercy of fraudsters who live off the blood and sweat of others, to the extent that the law has failed to regulate such ostensibly fraudulent investment schemes.
Therefore, Nigerians must themselves become vigilant. They must ask questions of those agencies. To that end, they must rise to the occasion when the peddlers of such investment schemes come to them to fleece them of their hard-earned money.
Also, the government must shake itself loose of its inertia to confront the many criminals who pose as genuine businessmen. The government must put laws and regulations in place to check the rampage of these fraudsters and petty criminals.
But most importantly, the government must put measures in place to lift more people out of poverty. Families should be able to properly feed their children, keep them properly housed, clothed and in school.
If the government can do this, if more families can be put out of the grasping claws of poverty, the criminals who prey on the financial insecurities of people will have far fewer victims.
Kene Obiezu wrote from Abuja.
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