Jii: Welcome back, welcome back. Good day, wherever you are. We have, as always, Mr. Sheriff on the money sector of Inskriba Conversations. I will get better with the intro, but we keep moving. How has your week been?
Sheriff: My week was pretty cool. I did not have much to do. I am still settling into a new place I just got, so I have not done much for now. Though they gave me a few tasks which I have almost completed. But everything is going fine. How was yours?
Jii: Honestly, not bad. Just work. Work and thinking about my life, because I have spent too much time on YouTube, like I was saying before we started. I am watching a lot of vloggers and thinking, this looks interesting, why did I choose to go corporate, why did I choose to go nine to five?
Sheriff: The truth is there are more unsuccessful vloggers than successful ones. It is a very competitive space, so it is better to just be part of the audience than to join them. It is very stressful. Intrusive into your life. It is a lot.
Jii: It is. And that is one of the things I think about. I honestly cannot hold the camera. First of all, I am too shy to be holding the camera and explaining, or trying to film everything I see. And I know they do not film everything that goes on in their lives. But I do not think it is something I can consistently do. I guess they are doing their jobs if I am fascinated by what they are showing me. But the week has been good. Just a normal week, a week after coming back from a one week time off, so trying to catch up on all the things I missed at work.
Jii: When you start something new, like you just did, does it feel weird? Do you try to make them see you? I mean they already see you because you are new, but do you do anything extra?
Sheriff: To be honest, my first week, my first month, my first three months, I use to scan the area. To know how the work culture is, the work behaviour, how they speak to themselves, what ticks people off, so I know how to speak to whoever I am speaking to. So my first three months in a new place I usually just use to scan through, to know exactly where I am and how I should act accordingly. Because if you just go in and take your previous culture to a new place, it could cause a clash of cultures and you just have a difficult beginning.
Sheriff: You should not become close to people unnecessarily. So I think the first few weeks, depending on how fast you acclimatise with people, you should use to read the room.
Jii: Has there ever been a situation where you stopped doing something you were doing at a former job, and then in the new place you were like, no, I do not think I can do that here? It does not have to be anything bad, it is just you aligning to the culture in the new place.
Sheriff: My career is still pretty early, so I have not really gone to jobs like that, so I do not really have that experience. Have you?
Jii: I am thinking about this because I think I am pretty standard when it comes to work. When I am at work, it sounds weird, I hardly talk to anybody. And because of the kind of job I do, I do not really interact with a lot of coworkers. I go to work, come back. I have tried the whole culture thing, let me interact at work. I do not think it is my jam. But congrats on the new gig.
Jii: We are talking about money today again. No financial advice, we are just talking about the systems we live in, we are talking about how we live, and that is why it is called Inskriba Conversations. No financial advice.
Jii: To start, we are talking about financial literacy. The first time I heard the phrase, I was pretty grown, maybe even in uni. And you know how you hear something so much that you think you understand what it means. I think it is called surface processing, or surface learning. Where you have heard it so much that you say, yeah, I know what that means. And someone says, okay, what does it mean? And you struggle to define it. That happened to me, even up to now. Maybe I know bits and pieces. But we want to talk about financial literacy, from saving culture to how Nigerians think about money. And we did a survey, like we usually do, which I will go into. But what is financial literacy?
Sheriff: From a Nigerian perspective, from an informal perspective, you would say a typical Nigerian has an understanding of financial literacy to an extent. They understand that they earn this amount of money, they understand that they need this amount for a particular project they are trying to do. They understand that they need to save this amount. And those who do not save, they understand that they will blow everything off in gambling or whatever it is. They understand the consequences of it.
Sheriff: So while a lot of Nigerians may not typically admit that they have formal financial literacy, the formal one that banks or financial institutions give out, I would say a lot of Nigerians have a rough idea, as you mentioned, a surface level idea of what financial literacy entails.
Sheriff: Now for financial literacy when it comes to the formality of it, it is your understanding of how to manage your personal finances. What you use money to do, how you get money, how you spend it, how you save it. So it is basically your relationship with money. And the financial literacy part is how well you can do such things, how well you can manage your funds, how well you can manage your financial life.
Jii: How well you can manage your financial life. In my generation at least, we did not come in contact with money very early in terms of handling money as a person. The way we handled money was usually, go and buy this, and you are coming back with change. And even when the extended family gives you money, you are supposed to bring it all to your parents: this is how much I was given. And they say, I will help you keep it. The only training we had was, my parents are keeping the money in the bank for me.
Jii: So in our questionnaire, the first question we asked people was, who taught you about money, and what did they actually teach you? And a couple of people started with my parents, my boss. Most people said parents. Most people said mom. One person said nobody, they just taught themselves.
Jii: Obviously first things like that in life probably come from your immediate family. The next question was, in your language or your parents' language, how is money talked about? Because financial literacy is money. So one of those questions we asked was, what is the language, how do we see money? One thing we have noticed is that in Nigerian culture, money comes and goes. Money is not meant to stay, it is not meant to sit. And it reflected in the way people responded. But I wanted to get your sense of it. In your own language, what is money, really?
Sheriff: For me, money is like a tool for comfort. It is something I will use to buy comfort, whatever comfort is, and that is my own personal opinion. Money is not an end, it is not the goal itself. It is just a pathway to whatever it is I am trying to achieve in my life.
Sheriff: However, if I am speaking from what I have seen with the way Nigerians treat money, they treat it as the goal, as the end point. If you do not have it, you are less respected. In a lot of circles in Nigeria, you are less respected. If you have it, even if you are a despicable human, you will still be respected. People will say, go and make your money. Why are you criticising somebody that has money? So there is an almost matrimonial relationship between Nigerians and money, the way they treat money like gods.
Sheriff: That is why I think we are currently where we are. Our politicians, our celebrities, and even in our corporate lives, we see the way people spend money and the way they are respected. As long as they are elite, we do not say they can buy the law, but they can sort of bend it in a way that they do not suffer compared to a normal Nigerian. And Nigerians will even defend it. They will say, he has money now, or she has money.
Sheriff: But my own personal relationship is based on how I was brought up. We were brought up very strictly when it comes to money, we were not given a lot of money. Until I finished secondary school in 2016. I was in boarding, so they gave our boarding house some amount of money. In a week I could only spend two hundred naira. And bread at that time was about a hundred naira. So if I have spent one hundred to buy bread, how much do I have left to buy anything else? So we had a very stringent way of spending money.
Sheriff: So by the time I went to university and we did not have any parental control or cover, it was easy to manage funds because we understood how to manage it better. But for people whose first time it is out of their parents' cover, they burn through money too fast. They have to start either begging for money or asking their parents for more. I think for a lot of people, especially if you come from a very strict middle class family, or you did not have much growing up, there is a particular way in which they spend money much more, I do not want to call it wisely, but they spend money on exactly what they need, because they cannot afford to spend it on things they do not need.
Jii: I agree. Nigerians, we have a very weird relationship with money. And it is so fascinating the way we build up the power of money. We build it to the utmost. We do it to the point where even money is looking at us like, I did not know I could be used like this.
Jii: Some of the responses we got were interesting. The question was, in your language or your parents' language, how is money talked about? And people took it literally, in terms of their mother tongue, their native language, which is interesting. Maybe when we are writing the next question we should make it more intuitive. But people were writing Igbo, Yoruba. And someone said, a good character cannot be acquired by money. That is how they see money in Igbo. They wrote it in Igbo, I do not want to murder it so I will read the translation.
Jii: Someone also said, it is he who has money that has the right to shout. A person said, in my language money is often spoken about as something that comes to you as compensation for valued services offered. One saying I grew up with is, value is money. Someone said, the money you save will save you. A common Yoruba saying is that money is a vehicle that carries good intentions. I am on the fence with that one, because Nigeria is literally the definition of money carrying bad intentions.
Sheriff: Bad intentions.
Jii: Someone said, it reminds me that while money is not everything, it often makes it easier to achieve goals and help others. Another lesson I grew up hearing is that money should be earned honestly and managed wisely, because wealth without integrity does not last. I have seen Nigerian politicians have money since 1999, so I guess we can contextualise what does not last means. Maybe it means one generation or two generations. Someone said money is the root of all evil, and also that money brings respect.
Jii: What we are seeing is how money defines not just who you are but your relationship with other people. When I was in uni there was this ideology moving around: if you do not spend money, you will not make money. You need to let money go for money to come in. And it was always like the Dead Sea. It takes and takes, and that is why nothing lives in it. Some very funny ideology. I think someone can carry out a study to understand how we got to where we are.
Jii: If you had the opportunity to define what money is to Nigerians, to tell them, do not think like this, where would you steer them?
Sheriff: If I wanted to correct the mindset Nigerians currently have about money, the thing is, it would be like I am encouraging poverty in a way, because of the people I am speaking to. Nigerians are not the poorest people in the world, but the way we treat money is not healthy at all. It is unhealthy.
Sheriff: So if I were to speak to Nigerians I would say, money will come, and even if it does not come, it is fine. But do not lose yourself just because you are trying to get money. Now I like money. I am not saying I would not try every possible way to get money. But those possible ways will be legal, honest ways. I would not try to destroy another person's life just because I am trying to make money.
Sheriff: But some people even justify it. They come and say there is nobody that is a billionaire that has not done shady acts, that it is not possible, stuff like that. I am always like, one, it is not your place to compare yourself with them. Two, how do you know all billionaires have done shady acts to get their money? It is reductive to just generalise like that. Now I am not saying billionaires do not have shady activities. A lot of them are interesting people.
Jii: Even paupers have shady activities.
Sheriff: Exactly. But it does not mean that I would lose myself just because I must make this money. There are songs that have been released about, we should just make this money. They do not care where the money is coming from, just make it. And after you make it, you will now ask for forgiveness from God.
Jii: You will cleanse.
Sheriff: Exactly. That is why you see politicians who steal money and then build a mosque or a church to ask for forgiveness. Or they start philanthropy afterwards, because they feel like that would be enough.
Sheriff: And there is something, basically meaning: they have given you dodo, you are unable to say the truth again. So immediately somebody has given you a bit of money, you will be unable to criticise such a person. So by the time this politician has stolen one billion, and he first came to your area and shared 25k to all the youths, by the time the EFCC is catching him, you start shouting that it is a witch hunt or something like that.
Sheriff: I believe it is from a family setting, because the family is the unit of the society. So it is a familial thing, and it has crept into our religious bodies, our formal settings, our peer groups. So it is everywhere. I am not saying do not be money centric, but be honest at it. Be balanced. We need balance in what we do. I am not saying do not be hard working and try to get the money, because it is very important that we all become as successful as possible. But do not do it at the detriment of others. It is wrong.
Jii: I agree. Especially because we had a whole generation, and this goes into what I want to talk about next, which is the generational shift. We had a whole generation, or part of a generation, that built their world by cheating people on the internet. Of course it did not start with them. It started with a generation that looted public funds and then shifted to, I need to make this whole money. And then the internet came and a whole generation decided to go into that. At the time it sounded like every Nigerian boy you met was a Yahoo boy. It was as if that was just enough.
Jii: Which leads into our next point, the generational shift. Our parents' relationship with money was work and put money in the bank. Maybe middle class or upper middle class, the high income earners did a little bit of stock, but that was not even popular. But now there is a shift. And this led from a number of factors, from the failing systems in Nigeria to the influx of the idea of multiple streams of income, to the gig economy. Now there is just this unquenchable need for constantly earning money, and it is overshadowing everything else.
Jii: Before, our parents' nine to five was enough. They took care of on average three kids, the family, living in. You are fed, you have a roof over your head, you go to private school. You saw the collapse of public school, then private school came and they started paying for that. Maybe some parents started to do one or two things on the side. But I wanted to talk about the generational shift. Did they see money the way we are seeing money in this generation, or has there been a shift?
Sheriff: This question is something I have been asking myself. Because when we say this current generation has become money crazed, and then we say our parents were teaching us to be honest and saving people, it is like we are contradicting ourselves. Did the parents teach us how to save and then we decided not to listen and became money crazed? Or they did not actually teach us, or they taught us something wrong? So there is that disconnect between what we assume the older generation taught us and what the younger generation is doing.
Sheriff: In some kind of way, Nigeria is like a poor man's United States. According to what I have read, I have not been there, but according to what I have read, everybody is crazed for money in the United States. Money is the number one thing there. So Nigeria skipped the path of prosperity and went straight to how to be making money. The US grew to the money craze that they currently have. Nigeria skipped prosperity and went straight from poverty. They started looking for money with a form of desperation.
Sheriff: To be honest, I do not know where that shift came from. What I can attribute it to in a lot of ways is the leadership. Because when people keep saying that those entrusted with public offices are pilfering, they are stealing, and there are no consequences. Now there are countries that are successful and their public officials still steal, but the citizens do not care about the stealing as much, because they are still enjoying the dividends. But in the case of Nigeria, they are stealing and we are still not enjoying. So people have just lost all hope and have decided, any which way.
Sheriff: Because if you speak to a Yahoo boy and tell him that what he is doing is hurting the image of the country, they will say, but the politicians are stealing now and nothing is happening to them. So that is their argument. That is, according to them, their reasonable argument: since the leaders are also doing it. So I think the shift happened where people just lost all hope in the system.
Sheriff: And people do not want to be like their parents. Obviously all parents pray for their children to become better than them. Or most parents pray for their children to be better than them. So when the child is now saying that he is not even half as good as his parents, at some point he will just decide, well, I will do whatever I can do to make this money.
Sheriff: There is a song, if you listen to the lyrics it is just, make the money. It does not matter where it comes from, just go and make the money. And you hear some slang, money now. You see our clubs. I was watching a skit by, I think he is Kenyan, a skit maker. He was talking about how different African countries ball in a club. When you go to Nigeria, it is money everywhere, drinks, bring more drinks, everything. And people see that.
Sheriff: So our own generation, or should I say my generation to the ones above, not our parents' own, just us in our twenties to our forties, we post all these things online. Children in secondary school, or those just entering university, are seeing it and they also want to ball like their immediate predecessors. And they do not know that a lot of this balling is either fake life, or illegal money. And even those that are legal, they are rich enough to do that. You are still starting your life. Because if you are not able to get it, you become disappointed, and then you tend to become, I will not say forced, because no one can really force you to do something evil in most cases. But I think that is just where it comes from. That disconnect where people just lost hope, and they said they do not want to be like their parents. Their parents have suffered through all the previous governments. They want to become better and they do not care where it comes from.
Jii: I agree. When you were talking, I was checking a story that had always been in my head. I think the signs were also there, because you see the older generation, two, three cars. We are very social in Nigeria. I think it is something I can say of most, if not all, ethnic groups in Nigeria: very social and communal. And then social media, the internet came, shortening the distance between different places. And we are seeing things in other countries, seeing how people were living. And like you said, America is built such that it almost preaches, and I say almost because there are guidelines they follow and there is a grey area, it almost sounds as if they are telling you, do anything to make money. Which I now learn is not great financial advice. Do not lose yourself, like you said. That is part of financial literacy. Maybe it is not even necessarily a shift. Maybe it is just the evolution of where we were before into this.
Jii: And the story I was looking at was, I do not know if you have heard of strain theory. It is a sociological and criminological concept that proposes that deviance and crime occur when individuals experience societal pressure or strain due to the gap between culturally accepted goals, for example financial success, and their legitimate opportunities to achieve them.
Jii: Which goes in line with when you ask someone [inaudible], you are cheating people, whatever you are doing is not good. And they tell you, okay, but the politician is doing it. Or they say, what else can I do? Whether we like it or not, society will look for means to survive, to get what they want. Strain theory conceptualises it as: people will look for other means outside the guidelines of the law.
Jii: Let us go to saving. I did not believe in saving. I believed in increasing your income rather than saving. That came from me thinking, if you need more money, just increase how much money you are making to cover your expenses. I guess it is very myopic. Now I know. But at that time it was really helping. And also, I did not believe in having money just sitting somewhere not doing anything. But I did not have enough knowledge to know that I could put that money somewhere and it could be accruing, like stocks or whatever. Let us quickly talk about saving, and after you talk about it I will read the responses.
Sheriff: My opinion on saving is that savings, as it sounds, is meant to save you in days of tears and anguish. However, if I were to look at it from a Nigerian perspective, the majority of Nigerians are in the middle to low income classes. So with inflation, things are expensive, people do not earn enough for them to properly save.
Sheriff: So what a lot of Nigerians do is ajo. I think it was mentioned as part of the questionnaire, where some people gave it as an answer. A lot of people do ajo. Ajo is like their own form of saving. Say they have house rent to pay in six months, they will start saving for the house rent in the form of ajo, by giving it to whoever is supposed to hold it. So this month I collect, next month somebody else collects. And that is what we have had from our traditional days, before colonial rule. So we have always had that kind of saving culture where people transfer the bulk amounts within themselves to sort out some personal issues. So I think that is the main source of saving.
Sheriff: Now your opinion about people earning more, it is from a very good perspective. And you already said it, you saw that it is also a privileged perspective in a way, because it is not that people do not want to earn more, it is just that they are not able to anymore. That causes a strain on the way they can save.
Sheriff: I have a few friends who ask me about investing. I even have a friend who teaches people financial literacy, and before he advises them on how to invest, he tells them to first open an emergency savings account where they have a particular amount of money, before they even start investing, because investments can crash.
Sheriff: Now people say treasury bills are risk-free, so if a country borrows money from you, people assume the country cannot default. But there are countries that have defaulted. Argentina is currently defaulting on their loans, and Ghana had the issue in 2022 where they defaulted on the treasury bills they sold. They are already clearing it now, but imagine you had money in that in 2022. That means you would not have been able to get it. Let us say even Ghana's economy becomes worse before it recovers.
Sheriff: So it is very good to always have savings. Even I myself, I am guilty of not saving enough, because your body will be itching. Your money is sitting there, it is not growing, it is not doing anything. But just have a savings account. You can decide what kind of savings account you want. You can put it in a fixed deposit account where you just lock it at a particular interest rate. Some people do that. Or you can just save it in any account, put it there, nobody touches it. You can do that.
Sheriff: But in the Nigerian context, the majority do not really save as such. They sort of do a draw and then collect, to sort out the emergency they prepared for, then continue like that. Because they do not earn as much as they should. That is why you see a Nigerian having three, four jobs: office in the morning, selling clothes as a side, weekend open the shop and sell another thing. So we do have our own ways of saving, but it is not typically the way conventional economics considers savings.
Jii: I agree. Only 14 people responded to this financial literacy questionnaire. One of the questions was, do you save? A single choice. Yes, but when I have. Yes, I save regardless of whether I have or not. And no. Nobody said no. It only split between yes when I have, and yes regardless. So there is a saving culture.
Jii: And maybe it is from trauma or survival. Most Nigerians, especially because of the way they see money, never want to be in a situation where they have to ask, because of the shame attached, or where they need to rely on someone. Because of the way we see money, someone literally defined it as, the person that has money is the person that can shout.
Jii: We are also going to touch investing, because we are touching areas of financial literacy. The question was, if you could choose one to invest in, which would you choose? Another single choice. The options were gold or rare earth minerals, foreign stocks, cryptocurrency, Nigerian stocks, bank savings, and agriculture. I honestly thought cryptocurrency was going to be at the top of the list, but I guess people now know. The volatility associated with cryptocurrency is not encouraging.
Jii: Most people, four people, chose gold or rare earth, because I think it is becoming a thing in Nigeria now. And then foreign stocks. Just one person chose bank savings. One person chose agriculture. And two people chose Nigerian stocks, even though the Nigerian stock market is said to be one of the best performing in the world. Let us talk about investing.
Sheriff: Investing is something Nigerians do not really understand. If we were to do a full survey, I am sure the majority would be that they do not understand it well enough. Also there is this fear with investing. A lot of our parents who were investors early into the 2000s were burned by the 2008 financial crash, where a lot of their money was wiped out.
Sheriff: It is not like they did not do their due diligence. They did all their due diligence. Just that a lot of the faults of the financial markets were not even in Nigeria's control. America decided, there were a lot of issues with their own financial markets that eventually trickled down to Nigeria. Nigeria also had a major issue where our own NGX fell. It was also due to some internal structural deficiencies we had at the time, which I personally think have been largely corrected, with more being corrected day on day.
Sheriff: So a lot of older people do not invest as such. What they would rather do is keep the money, either as ajo, or as the money is available they will buy their investments. If you speak to another person and say you have a bit of money, they will tell you, go and buy land. Go and buy land, it will appreciate. If you mention to them that you want to invest in a stock, they will say, stock? Your money can disappear. You trust these people? Which people are you investing in? Especially with digital now, that you do not even need to send [inaudible] or send letters. So they are very distrustful of the system.
Sheriff: So although there has been an increase, especially with young people being more curious about investments recently, I think it would take a lot of convincing to have a majority of Nigerians investing. If we were to look at the United States or South Korea, for instance, you will see a lot, from old age to young children, everybody has some particular stake in a company. But in Nigeria it is just the older people, those that are institutional investors. You will see them going to all the AGMs of companies, because they have been there from the beginning. They are not so scared. There are not many. Then you see a lot of younger people who just came in like 2020, 2021, and started investing.
Sheriff: So I would say it would take a lot of convincing, but if the structure works fine more people would keep investing. Because right now the economy is not necessarily good but the NGX has been performing very well. And when I say the economy is not good, the numbers look good, but the effects are not felt by the people. That is what I mean: people are not feeling what the numbers are saying. But if the numbers keep becoming good, and the structural defects within the investment space become better, and then the economy, people start feeling that things are actually becoming better, then I think it would be easier to convince them.
Sheriff: There are older people who have their money invested although they do not really know the mechanism, like their pension funds. If you have ever worked in a structured organisation your pension is invested one way or another, but they do not really know those calculations, they do not care. Just make sure my money is safe, that is what they want.
Sheriff: So it is something that can be done, it is not impossible. Nigerians are difficult people. We are difficult people. But we are also easy people when we can see something we can trust. So we become less mistrustful. The first few times there will still be a lot of mistrust, but after a while, when you see consistency, then investments can become normal. But for now, I think for Nigerians it is mainly what is on their mind: earn more, save the ones they can, and save as much as they can.
Jii: I agree. I did not get into investment until pretty late. And honestly, it sounded like a very complicated concept. And I think you are right, Nigerians can be very result oriented. Okay, what comes out of this? You are talking too much, what is the end result? And I guess that is why a lot of Ponzi schemes, in addition to poverty and the economy. Most people just want to confirm: if I invest 500k I get 1 million in four days, okay, let us run it. In line with, okay, I am investing my pension, how much am I going to be getting every month, it is fine, let us move on.
Jii: Another time, another episode, we will go deep into the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the public stocks. I have so many theories about it. I call myself an illiterate when it comes to the Nigerian Stock Exchange. But we will dedicate an episode to it and how people can invest.
Jii: We have two more questions and responses. The first is, if you could decide what every young Nigerian was taught about money, what is the one thing you would make sure they learned? Someone said, money can make life easier, but money is not everything. Someone said, investment is everything. Someone said, they should understand that earning money is only the beginning, what really builds wealth is how you manage it. I would want every young person to learn how to budget, save consistently, avoid unnecessary debt, and invest early. This one is so detailed. What would you want Nigerians to learn?
Sheriff: I think the last person whose response you read is very on point. Budgeting. Knowing the amount you earn, budget the amount you would spend. You can have emergency savings, you can have investments. Now there are people who do not earn much, so it is understandable, but you should still have a budget. So whenever you are stepping out of that budget, you know the amount you need to look for to cover that deficit, and then you do not overextend yourself. So that answer is very on point. Budget, have savings, invest the rest of your money. Those are things every young person should look into.
Sheriff: Nigeria is a communal country and everybody likes to come together and do things. But if you know yourself, your friend is doing a wedding, they are selling aso ebi for very expensive prices, already above your budget, even above your supplementary budget, just tell your friend that you will wear white to the wedding. Wear one of your white clothes, white always goes with any event, just wear white and go. Because the wedding is a day, your life continues. You will still be the one at home looking for what to eat, looking for where to get cash from. So just make sure you are responsible with the money you earn, because in a way nobody is coming to save you. At least no human is coming to save you. You are the only one that can save yourself. So be very responsible.
Jii: I did not finish reading it. It says, they should understand that earning money is only the beginning. What really builds wealth is how you manage it. I would want every young person to learn how to budget, save consistently, avoid unnecessary debt and invest early. I would also teach them that financial success is built through discipline, patience, and informed decisions, rather than the pursuit of quick money. These skills can help people make better choices, achieve financial independence, and build a more secure future regardless of their starting point.
Sheriff: Sorry, I wanted to say something. I said Nigerians do not really understand investing, and it is true. However, Nigerians do invest, but they invest in things that are for quick money. There was MMM, there was CBEX, there have been hundreds of scams that have come to Nigeria. Nigerians understand that they are scams, but they are always betting that they came in early so they will be out before the crash. So a lot of them are always hoping, I know it is a scam, but I will be out before it crashes. So it would be an investment of sorts. They are looking for that double my money, triple my money.
Sheriff: But when it eventually crashes, a lot of people are already exposed. I think CBEX was about 1.3 trillion. And a lot of the people who invested in CBEX were not high income people. They were low income people. People were breaking their savings, borrowing money to invest in this scam. They knew it would crash, but they were just hoping it would not crash with them. So Nigerians do invest. It is just unfortunate that, that is our desperation with money. They are looking for quick-rich schemes.
Jii: We will have an episode on just Ponzi schemes, especially in Nigeria, and why Nigeria is such fertile ground for them. And it is not just Nigeria, it is all over the world.
Jii: I want to end with the last question from the questionnaire: what is your belief about money? Someone said, hard work pays. Someone said, I believe money makes life easier. While it cannot buy everything or solve every problem, it provides access to basic needs, opportunities, health care, education, and a greater sense of security. To me, money is a tool that reduces financial stress and gives people the freedom to make choices and plan for the future. I do not believe money is the most important thing in life, but having enough of it makes it much easier to live with dignity and pursue personal goals.
Jii: Mr. Sheriff, what is your belief about money?
Sheriff: As I said, I think it was part of our earlier questions, it is just a tool to me. I intend to achieve some things in this life, and money is not the end goal. If I become rich today, it does not mean I will just backpedal and relax. I have not gotten to the pinnacle of exactly what I am trying to achieve. Money should just be a tool for people. It can be comfort for you, it can be freedom for you, it can be anything.
Sheriff: But it should not be the end goal, because, and I am not being pessimistic, not everybody will be wealthy. But everybody should be comfortable. That is my belief, that everybody should be comfortable, should be able to access the basics. So if your end goal is that you have to be wealthy, and there is a chance that you are not wealthy, and you already have that as your end goal, it becomes pressure on you, where by any means necessary you have to get the money. So you would not look at the legality, the integrity, you would just be bullish about making that money. Money to me is just a tool to get to where I wish to get to. It is the route.
Jii: I agree with everything you said. Money should not be the end goal. The whole point of financial literacy is not just to make money. It is to be able to make informed decisions on the different aspects that touch money, from your job to how you see it, to the decisions on what should I buy, what should I eat, the choices you make, the trade-offs. Financial literacy does not mean you have money. It is even more about how you spend money.
Jii: If you want to check out the data set, it is going to be public on the Inskriba website if you are interested. Then join in to give your responses, you can also do so on the Inskriba website.
Jii: I want to end with what someone said. It is a little bit extreme. Money is very powerful and it can destroy. That is my belief about it. It comes with a dopamine feeling, but it can also destroy us if we let it control us. That is my food for thought to end this episode. Money can destroy. Watch out for money. Thank you again for coming on this episode.
Sheriff: Thank you very much. And thank you to our anonymous respondents.
Jii: Thank you to them. Like I said, if you want to join, nobody knows your name, nobody knows who you are. You can sign up to join and give your responses. It helps us know how Nigerians are thinking, and you get to see how other people are thinking about the concepts we are discussing. Until next time. Again, money is very powerful and it can destroy. See you next time.
Sheriff: Thank you.