Mavrodi Mondial Movement, MMM for short has in a little under a year taken Nigeria by storm. According to its website there are over 1.6 million Nigerians who are members of a system where they pay each other directly in a community that claims to help one another. Members are promised a whopping return of 30 percent monthly, while they are expected to also share the good news with others to join the movement and earn hefty returns.
At the last count there have been stories of people making a killing on the platform. This has attracted a lot of attention, and trust Nigerians looking for quick and easy opportunities they have jumped on the band wagon in search of those huge returns.
Now for those who may not know MMM is not the first of its kind in Nigeria. There have been many of such “wonder banks” in the last twenty to thirty years that made promises of heaven and earth to investors and ended up impoverishing them. One of the very earliest was Resources Managers Limited which promised a hundred percent return in the nineties and ended up crashing and causing depositors to lose their money.
Here are ten reasons why I am fully convinced and persuaded that those putting their hard earned money into MMM will also suffer the same fate:
MMM is an unregistered and faceless entity
Does anyone know who the promoters and founders of this company/system are in Nigeria? Every organization in the business of wealth creation is supposed to be approved, registered and monitored by a country’s regulatory authorities such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, CBN and the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The business of money making is extremely sensitive and requires robust regulating. A faceless entity can easily run away with partners funds.
No clarity as to how the whopping interest on funds deposited is generated
For the sake of reasoning how many businesses can guarantee a monthly return of thirty percent per month every month and year on year? Even the best businesses have bad times when outlook for profit is bleak and you have the MMM people promising returns all the time? This is too good to be true and never happens in real life.
MMM claims to help the citizen but does nothing for Nigeria
A scheme that pays no taxes, hires no Nigerians, does not have any plans for improving the lot of the less privileged, and only plans on giving its members huge returns is no good for the continued development and growth of this beloved country.
None of the big players in wealth creation are involved
Considering that it’s so easy to make huge returns, then why is none of the nation’s brightest wealth creators involved in MMM? Surely it would be so much easier to put down a deposit and sit somewhere and earn thirty percent monthly than to struggle to create something that might not turn a profit in several years? I mean if it’s that good surely the rich would have spotted the opportunity and made something of it sooner?
Their Modus operandi is similar to those of wonder banks
Wonder banking thrives on promising huge rates of return and getting people to get their friends to participate. Things start out going very well as long as there are more people putting in than those who come to take money out. However a time inevitably comes when more people want to take out than put in, which is usually when they are being investigated and you find the system crashing and majority losing out on their investments.
Organisations similar to MMM end up crashing
Organisations that promise astronomically high returns on your investments within the shortest possible period of time always end up crashing and causing investors to lose money. There is in fact a case in court in Enugu of two people Patrick and Rosemary Nwokike who ran a similar scheme to MMM. They succeeded in collecting over N4 billion from depositors and have defaulted in paying them interest.
Government is committed to exposing and bringing perpetrators to book
According to a 2010 report in www.economicconfidential.com, a special committee has disclosed that a total of 560,882 claims amounting to N106.9 billion had been submitted by members of the public against 440 illegal companies/’wonder banks’. Out of these, 36 illegal fund managers accounted for N104 billion, or 97.3 per cent of the total collated claims.
Investing without rational thinking
MMM is a clear example of people investing without being rational and logical. How can someone just come up with an idea of people giving each other money that translates to huge returns and nearly two million Nigerians are buying into it? Making money is the result of rational and logical thinking.
Funds made easily usually get spent on things without value
All things considered it is quite difficult to spend wisely even when the money is hard earned. However in my experience it is more difficult to spend wisely when you made money without the commensurate effort. Those who are boasting about making huge returns are unlikely to have invested the proceeds in worthwhile ventures, especially since they are likely to believe more will be coming through this means.
Schemes like MMM actually do harm to a nation’s economy
Just imagine for a minute the effect of withdrawing money from the banking sector and other sectors of the economy and putting it into MMM? It means less money for banks to give loans and to circulate in the real sectors of any economy. This could seriously affect economic policy and our efforts to come out of recession when our citizens pour all of their earnings into schemes that create no value in a bid to make wealth.
I would have failed to rest my case without challenging the supporters of MMM scheme on why they haven’t sold the idea of using it to get Nigeria out of recession. I mean if we put in a billion dollars by the end of 12 months we would have a whopping 2.2 billion! In no time we should have enough to come out of recession!
Fellow Nigerians, be wise and shine your eyes and get out of MMM while you still can with minimal losses as soon as possible because it is about to crash.
Kenneth Doghudje
