The Acting Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Mary Uduk, on Thursday advised Nigerians to take advantage of various financial products availed by the nation’s equity market and explore them for investment.
Uduk, gave the advice in her welcome address delivered at the event by the commission’s Head of Investment Education at the Commission, Mr. Francis Okafor, at the Investors Week/Financial Inclusion Sensitization Programme in Gwagwalada, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
She advised the residents and other Nigerians to put their money in the right kinds of investments that would guarantee safety of their funds.
While interacting with journalists on the sidelines of the event, Okafor harped on the capital market’s investment opportunities and advised Nigerians to invest their money wisely instead of keeping them in unsafe places.
Okafor explained: “Financial inclusion is mostly for the excluded. We go to the grassroots because it is this kind of people that keep money under the bed which is a minus to the gross domestic product of the country. We encouraged them to bring it to the bank so that it can be used to stimulate the economy.”
Speaking on plans being initiated by the SEC to partner with other financial bodies to improve financial inclusion in the country, Okafor disclosed that the capital market regulator was developing a commodity ecosystem for the country, which is mainly about commodities and agricultural products.
He pointed out that beyond oil, agriculture remained a sub-sector that can increase and bring the country to limelight, adding that the commission has seen that agriculture is going down and that is where the commodity ecosystem comes in.
Okafor, who hinted that the ecosystem remained now at the implementation stage, said that the SEC was hoping to establish and increase a commodity exchange that we will compete with be better than what we have today in stock exchanges.
In his comments at the forum, Head of Awareness Unit, National Pension Commission (PenCom), Emeka Onuora, said that the micro pension scheme which would bring the informal sector into the pension scheme, would come with incentives that will make it flexible to operate.
He explained: “We want to include those who are on their own. We believe they should have time to retire, it doesn’t mean that when you work on your own you can’t retire. There is need to contribute something for pension before you retire.”
