Young Nigeria to invest in the capital market — SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday has stated its full devotion to make capital market appealing to all Nigerians, most specifically the youth.
The SEC Director-General, Mr. Lamido Yuguda, declared during a meeting with a team led by the British Deputy High Commissioner in Abuja.
According to him, the commission involves a step to guarantee market items and offerings are available to both young and old people, which will help to expand the market.
He realised that peoples of average age of fifty years most young Nigerians were not interested in engaging the Nigeria capital market.
Yuguda said, “The average age of that account holder was over 50, and that made us realise that the young people were not participating in this market and when young people are not participating in any market, that market is doomed to fail. And young people today prefer to do things on their phones; if you have to fill a stack of forms manually young people won’t do it. We want to make investing in the capital market a fun experience.”
According to him, the capital market experience starts with a bank account.
“So we decided to look at the whole process and find out what is turning young people off. We have started the process and seen how the tech companies are providing much-needed relief to the kind of bureaucracy that happens in the capital market,” he said.
Yuguda also said that the SEC recently accepted an e-offer for MTN, expressing the commission’s delight. He claimed that with the e-offers, many Nigerians would be willing to engage in the capital market, discouraging people from supporting unlawful enterprises.
In order to entice more individuals to the market, he said, the commission was focused on a proper identity management system, which would also help with the issue of unclaimed dividends.
Llewellyn-Jones, for one, argued that one approach to keep people out of the unregulated space is for the SEC to develop more alternative investment opportunities for all types of people.
“He said, the more you can create alternative options, the easier it is to pull people away from unregulated space and that is why the Sandbox is so attractive to us and why we encourage it.”
