The Securities and Exchange Commission has advised Nigerians to do due diligence on investment funds through the capital market operators portal on its website before investing in them.

The Director-General, SEC, Mr Lamido Yuguda, while addressing journalists on Friday during a webinar, said to effectively curtail the fraud perpetuated by Ponzi schemes, investors had to do their own research.

According to him, the commission has a list of registered and legitimate operators on its website.

Yuguda said, “Ponzi schemes are truly a big problem for our economy. It is very common to the extent that many of our citizens lose substantial sums to these schemes.

“The commission has adopted a variety of measures such as putting up the list of authorised capital market operators on our website so any interested investor will check there to confirm if the fund they want to invest in is duly registered.

“Unfortunately, many of these Ponzi operators, once they give these mouthwatering promises, gullible investors put their money there and they unfortunately lose it. Then they now come to us to lay their complaint, but just two minutes on the SEC capital market operator portal will help you confirm if they’re genuine.”

Yuguda said as part of measures to deepen the commodities ecosystem, the commission had held engagements with the National Insurance Commission towards de-risking and insuring certain commodity assets.

He said a technical committee had been constituted comprising representatives of the SEC, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, AFEX, Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange and the Nigerian Commodities Exchange to deliver agro-based standards within three months.

“The commission has equally solicited the support of the National Bureau of Statistics to develop an effective price discovery system mechanism for the commodities ecosystem . A technical committee has been constituted for this purpose with the mandate of developing modalities for this exercise,” he added.

He said the commission acknowledged the critical role the capital market could play in long-term financing of infrastructure in the country.

He said the SEC would continue to work with the relevant stakeholders to unlock the use of capital market instruments in funding key infrastructure needs especially in roads, housing and clean energy.