As young Nigerians continue to flock towards Forex trading as a means of making ends meet, M-Kopa Nigeria MD, Babajide Durosola has sounded a note of warning against fraudsters parading themselves as crypto experts.
Taking to his X (formerly Twitter) handle, the Nigerian tech leader berated Nigerians for their gullibility, noting that they keep making the same mistake and falling victim to the same tricks all over again.
“Una no dey hear word about this forex thing! Many people are just fraudsters pretending to be experts,” he tweeted.
He went further to elaborate why it will be difficult for an individual forex ‘expert’ to understand Forex enough to teach it, noting that banks that carry out major foreign exchange trading invest humongous sums into them.
“Do you know how much money and engineering investment banks spend on forex trading? Yet, someone with just four screens and chatting online wants to teach you? It’s hilarious!” he noted.
Nigerian Forex expert weighs in
Babajide Durosola’s warning is coming against a backdrop of increasing scams executed by supposed Forex tutors. These tutors, with their advertorials all over the place, promise to equip their students with the technical skills required to become successful traders in a very short time.
Most times, the Forex tutor would share soft copies containing instructions and that would be all. Due to biting hardship and an acute tech-bro syndrome that is propelled by a get-rich-quick mentality, many Nigerian youths find themselves falling for this scam time and time again.
A Forex trader, Prince Sokwaibe who spoke with Technext buttressed this, stating that greed and lack of proper knowledge are the major reasons why Nigerian youths are falling for the scams.
“Trust me forex is more stable an investment than crypto. The way it’s been taught and advertised is the problem. The talking and publicity are majorly from scammers. They are the ones mostly talking about it,” he said.
He acknowledged that he himself fell victim of these fake tutors severally before finally discovering the truths about foreign exchange trading. He noted that while there are many successful and legitimate individual traders, especially those in the Western world to emulate, most of the people who introduced Forex trading into Nigeria are brokers who did so with the intention of making a quick buck, a penchant which soon degenerated to outright fraud.
“The thing there is, most of the people who brought Forex into Nigeria are marketers and brokers and the brokers are only out to make money. They are not out to look for clients. Look at the guys they advertise with; comedians skit makers etc. These are the guys now talking about educational content for Forex, people who have never traded before,” he pointed out.
He said the brokers essentially lure people in with promises of increasing their few hundred dollars to thousands of it. This entices the average person to jump into the Forex space without understanding the huge sacrifices and risks involved. This always ends with them losing their money to the actual traders.
“These same brokers now recruited the same people they taught these shallow lessons and make them talk to other people in a pyramid scheme type arrangement, and impart the same crass methods thereby enticing those ones too to lose their money. So aside the brokers, there are thousands of individuals selling the same thing and getting more people to lose their money,” he said.
Nigerians lose millions of dollars to Forex scams every year. Indeed, recently, a Nigerian comedian and skit maker, Mark Angel revealed that he lost $3.7 million in forex trading, a situation which left him drowning in debt and ultimately becoming suicidal.
“I trusted the wrong hands in forex and lost all my money. Nobody knew except my family and closest circle. The weight of the loss, over $3.7 million was suffocating. I was drowning in debts, and one by one, I watched all my properties slip into the hands of loan sharks. It felt like my world was crumbling, and in my darkest moments, I considered ending it all,” he said.
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