PONZI SCHEMES AND FINANCIAL RISK-TAKING IN NIGERIA: A BEHAVIORAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

The study is on the ponzi schemes in Nigeria using social demographics to determine attitude to risks and the role of GREED and FEAR as the invisible hands that influence the market for ponzi schemes. The problem of study is that despite the warnings by the Nigerian monetary authorities to members of the public many Nigerians of all ages, professions and even students invested huge but unsecured sums of money in the hope of getting unusually high returns on their investments over a short period. The objectives were to investigate the demographic background and find out if these diverse backgrounds had much impact on human investment behavior, to find out if the investor’s professional exposure and income had much impact on human investment behavior and if the extent of returns on investments by the investors (profit or loss) will influence their decision to participate in Ponzi schemes tomorrow. The literature review deals with past work in related areas. The research methodology used were questionnaires designed in appropriately to infer if the three hypotheses held or not. The questionnaire was structured into three parts, the role of the respondent’s cultural/religious background, educational/career exposure and his losses or profit on his decision to take the risk in investing money in non-transparent schemes such as this. The findings indicate that a larger portion of the respondents lost money. Majority of the respondents most of whom participated in the different ponzi schemes have the benefit of higher education and were mostly southerners. They were largely unperturbed by religious or cultural tenets regarding gambling and their investment decisions was not guided by rational fundamental economic considerations but by human emotions such as FEAR and GREED. It is recommended that in addition to legislative enactments to protect macroeconomic policy it is vital that people should be weary of unsolicited offers as well as investigate the offers by seeking professional advice on how to deal with such mouthwatering promises or risk losing their investments.