 No matter how remote every investor is concerned about the possibility of a massive economic disaster, it has occurred previously. It may happen again, but years of hard-earned savings and retirement funds might be wiped away in us if this happens. Fortunately, you can protect most of your assets from a market catastrophe or worldwide economic crisis. An excellent defensive plan includes preparation and diversification. They can work together to help you withstand a financial storm. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. Welcome back. The House of Representatives has alleged that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami Essayen, was in receipt of funds accrued from the sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil in a China deal without remitting same to the Federation account. Chairman House of Representatives Adhok Khamiti investigated the alleged loss of over $2.4 billion in revenue from the illegal sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil export in 2015, including all crude oil exports and sales by Nigeria from 2014 to date. Hon. Mark Bila gave the hint while addressing invitees at the public hearing of the panel. Let's take details of that report now. The Adhok Khamiti was set up on December 2022 after a motion brought before the House by Hon. Ibrahim Ishakar on the need to investigate the serious loss recorded by the country incurred oil sale amounting to billions of dollars. The Speaker, Femi Bajabiamila, who was represented by Hon. Ishakar and his welcome address stated that sections 88 and 89, including the House rule, gave the House power to set up an other committee to investigate the alleged crude oil theft. This was botched by the chairman of the other committee, Hon. Mark Iqbila, who assured the invited organizations that the aim of the investigation is not to which aunt, but rather to address corruption. In the light of the dwindling revenue accrued to Nigeria from crude oil sales, it was quite alarming to learn about the whistleblower's allegations that over 2.4 billion US dollars in possible revenue by the country was allegedly lost from the sale of 48 million barrels of Nigeria's crude oil cargos in China. While we will not allow Nigeria's commonwealth to be stolen and treated away, we will also have to uphold the very tenets of human rights, the rule of law to say that everybody deserves a right to a fair hearing. In East Summation, a former lawmaker representing Iqboba, Oka, Federal Constituency in eight legislative assembly blamed the huge oil theft on the activities of cabals in the country who are determined to detail the will of progress in Nigeria. Through critical NEPC data and the Central Bank pre-shipment inspection report shows, an undeclared crude oil shortfall of 57 million, 830,000 of Nigeria's crude oil, translated to well over 17 billion dollars to the United States of America, also over 3 billion dollars to China, and 839,522,000,000 to Norway. Oriental Energy and Nigeria Intelligence Agency were present, but could not make submissions, but were, however, given one week to make a presentation. While the NNPC, CBN, AGF, Offstream Regulatory Commission, Ministry of Finance, Account General Office and others, all shunned first day of the hearing as a committee adjourned to next week. Straight now to the business of the day, whatever your approach to risk, it is generally considered wise to ensure you're not relying on one type of investment for returns within your portfolio. By diversifying or spreading your investment across different sectors and asset classes, you could reduce volatility, or this is just one tip, many more to expect. Now, Michael Obyadjou Esquire is a Nigerian legal practitioner, property consultant and rule estate broker and analyst. He is a graduate of the premium and prestigious University of Nigeria, Inigo Campers, where he studied law and graduated with an LLB and BL from the prestigious Nigerian law school, Lagos Campers. As a renowned lawyer, Michael has had his feel of litigation and legal practice. He has also gained stride by excelling to be head of legal and compliant to panic Nigeria limited. He has played lots of advisory and representative roles for PINEC in the real asset industry and he's not yet done with his assignment. Many thanks for joining us, Michael, on Business Insight on PLOS TV Africa. You're welcome. All right, let's just talk about the business of the day. We were talking about safeguarding your return on investment and what you need to do. I gave a tip that one needs to diversify his assets so that way your risk wouldn't be so concentrated. Why is that necessary? Oh, well, we're in the risk-based investment sector, operating in Nigeria, speaking with the spell of Nigeria in mind, where a lot of things pose risk to our investment, ranging from insecurity to government policies and otherwise. Even financial and economic dynamism also creates risk for business investors. So bearing that in mind, there's always the need to, just as he pointed out, diversify. I mean, diversification works in two respects. Either you diversify your investment within the same sets of assets. For instance, speak real estate, for instance, because that's where I function, majorly. Speaking real estate as an instance, you could diversify your investment by investing in various locations of the country. Of course, we have Lagos being the hub of real estate in Nigeria at the moment. You could spread your investment to Abuja, to Potacod, to these stampers of Nigeria and the likes. Another arm of diversification could be throwing your investment across the different investment portfolios. I mean, while you put your investment in real estate, you could also spread to stocks, you could spread to mutual funds, crypto, and a lot more of other opportunities that present itself. The reason for this being that the investment performance of one of your assets doesn't get to affect the totality of all that you've invested so far. So that provides you need to diversify. Okay, let me just take you back to what you just said about how to diversify. You talked about in terms of location, and of course, across some various portfolios. You mentioned real estate as an instance, and you said you could decide to invest in Abuja and also invest in maybe Lagos or any other state across the country. So in fact, you're saying that if one were to invest in real estate, the policy that may affect the business in Lagos might not be the same across some other state or what? Oh yeah. I'm very frank with that. I mean, Lagos is a very dynamic place to invest, taking you back to real estate. You see that if you invest in Lagos state, the government policies, the state government policies, how real estate again, properties are registered, and the bureaucracy around it can be a bottleneck to putting all your eggs in one basket. So that comes in need to diversify, to extend your tentacles to places like Abuja, who have a very fair and soft landing with respect to how you register your properties. The dynamism of Lagos is also entirely different. Cost of, even construction, cost of constructing in certain places in Lagos is relatively higher than so many other places in. So I mean, these are all tied down to the various economic behaviors per state, per location, government policies, per states, per location, underlies, and then you look at certain places like the Far North, Bono, if you want to invest in Bono, for instance, the insecurity challenges that area portrays will probably be a bottleneck as to why you could throw so much investment there. So then again, each location is given with various playgrounds for investments. Also, you also talked about diversifying in terms of portfolios, which brings to question that of broadened wants approach to investment financing. So what factors would you still consider if you were looking at broadening your approach in terms of portfolios? Will you be looking at your wherewithal or just the knowledge you have about him, securities, or those on platforms you want to play? What really works in that instance? OK, well, I'll start from what I call the foundation for everybody who wants to invest generally. So it comes from, first of all, the investor having a basic investor awareness, investment awareness, to use that word, investment awareness, whereby, I mean, take for instance, you want to invest in stocks, you want to invest in real estate, it behooves of you to carry out a research on what this field portrays, what it entails to invest in this place. Gering that in mind, you now go on to have your risk analysis. There's what we call the risk appetite. There's what we call the risk tolerance. Are you able to tolerate so much risk in this field you're looking to invest in? What's your appetite for Gering risk? How much risk can you bear? And then after you do that, you now take up the factor of setting your ROI goals. I mean, I believe we are talking on return on investment, setting your ROI goals, which I always advise that people make their ROI goals relatively attainable, something reasonable, something within reach and realistic as well. So when you look, you do that, you'll be able to know your risk threshold, how far you're looking to gain in your return on investment, in this particular investment, this particular location, and then only to now take the next step of conducting a very proper due diligence in investing. I mean, you cannot invest without any properties right now in Lagos and not everywhere in the country or even in the world at large without carrying a proper due diligence on the company you're purchasing from, the title of the property, the authenticity of the property in question and relatively crypto stock exchange, whatever it is. There's always that need to conduct to confirm if the interest is rated with the right regulatory bodies and all. After that, you know, get a professional. There's always the need to engage and expect in investment. Take for instance, we want to invest in ourselves, come back to real estate because that makes me that's my threshold, you know, my 40. So investing in real estate, it goes without the saying that you cannot invest in properties in Nigeria today without engaging the services of a lawyer. Oh, well, I'm a lawyer, so I offer services to people in that regard, a lawyer helps for the carers of due diligence. So it costs across every other dimension of life where you want to invest in. You always need the services of an expert, someone who's traded on that ground before. And then there's a need to always constantly evaluate and carry out and audit on your investment. Where were you when you invested? What was the solution of things now? Have things appreciated? Your ROI goals, you know, we talked about that before. Yeah, I was going to take you back. We're just before you won't get to continue. You talked about setting ROI goals that are attainable. You know, what makes your ROI goals attainable? For instance, if you really don't have much and you just want to start up with something small, maybe you have like 5 million now, you want to tell. So what kind of return should you be expecting that would be very, very attainable per se? I mean, basically every investor, as far as we all know, always wants to get as much ROI as possible. There's that hunger, wherever investment you want to go into. Everybody, every investor aims for as much ROI as they can get. But then, I mean, it's good to be realistic, you know. Is there a rule of thumb or something? Oh, no, basically just look at the environmental factors. It still boils down to environmental factors. Take for instance, then again, okay, take for instance, crypto, you know, you're investing in cryptocurrency, which is a very open market where many Nigerians are beginning to exploit lately. Investing in cryptocurrencies, what does the environment say about this? How high do you think you can get? There's no point living in Wonderland by setting outrageous and exorbitant ROI goals, and then in the long run, you're disappointed because over time, you're not able to get that. So it's good to be realistic. You look at the environment, you know, in Lagos, for instance, which is a real estate hobby in Nigeria, as we can Africa at large, the ROI in Lagos is relatively high. So there's what to expect. If you go far down certain places, you know, in the western, even in the east as well, where ROI is relatively low, you go and invest there without looking at the environmental factors and you're aiming in the star, the moon, sorry, you most likely get caught up in disappointment when you find yourself not attaining that high. All right, that's very, very interesting. Since we've talked about environmental factors, let's consider the role of the legal framework that might come to play in all of this. Specifically, if we're talking about investment, we're talking about returns on them and all of that. How far would you say regulation and the regulatory authorities and bodies have actually influenced maybe positively or negatively investment drives in the country? Oh, well, we hold lots. So we live in a mixed economy whereby as much as the capitalists have the orientation of how business to go should go, the government also has its orientation of how business should go and which always drives them to set up policies, to aid businesses and all of that. There are so many acts. The company like matters acts, you know, investment and securities acts, the NIPC, the National Investment Commission Act as well. And a good number of other laws in place that guides investment in Nigeria. So what challenge Nigeria is currently facing, you know, with respect to these regulations, are the implementation of them. So we have the bodies, the agencies who are supposed to further implement these policies for the betterment of the people and the government has our permittances that were failed in implementing their policies. In that way, it has adversely affected business. So Nigeria, as they always say, is a unique ground. It's not ideal society to invest in. It means that it's unique in its own way. So I mean, policies are there. A lot of them are obnoxious. A lot of them needs to be amended. You know, I made mention of registering in Lagos. You need to go and register a property in Lagos state and see what it takes, how rigorous and costly it is. So it costs, well, in the need of flexibility. And the government says this, they should actually do implement it. So the government has failed in implementation which has really, really affected the framework of implementing Nigeria. Let's still stay with regulation. Specifically now, let's talk about documentation which you have mentioned in passing in real estate in terms of government policies and all of that. Why is it that there is such a bottleneck or bottleneck when it comes to documentation for housing in real estate, specifically in a state like Lagos? Bureaucracy, retapism, that's really just what it is. So I've had the privilege of traveling to a good number of places, you know, the United Arab Emirates as well as the UK. If I'm not doubts, what it takes to register a property in these places are, I mean, as much as your legitimate purchase of this property, I mean, fair ground, very seamless procedure of permitting to use that word. But in Nigeria and then in Lagos, the sub-service, the Bureaucracy, the file passage from one person to the other and then, you know, it's a huge clock in the wheel. I mean, just that whole bureaucratic system. I mean, we're advancing, the government should open to reforms, reforms in technology. Technology has come to make things a lot easier. I mean, if Africa is embracing technology, it should reflect in things like this, you know. So that Bureaucracy and retapism has really been a clock in the wheel while registering properties everywhere in Nigeria, but Lagos state is a bit unique. In its own way, you know, it has really affected things in that regard. All right, since we're talking about, you know, landed properties, real estate in Lagos, another thing just came to my mind that that is land grabbing, which is a major issue in states like Lagos and maybe some other aspect. How can an investor, you know, genuinely protect himself so these issues will not really arise? Oh, well, there's only how far an investor can go. Like you pointed out, land grabbing is a major challenge. Mainly in Lagos, Potacot has a share of that cake as well, but relatively Lagos. So the government has really tried, for starters, there's land grabbers, you know, law in Lagos. So land grabbers protection law, there's also a court in Artecaja that tends to cases specifically relating to land grabbing as well. But for an investor, how far can you go? It all boils down to due diligence. I mentioned that in the first place, if you conduct a due diligence, I don't think you'll be making any much mistakes. I mean, there's the surface search which you can do to see what's basically on the surface and then there's the deep search as well, which most lawyers offer services in that regard to do on every detail of a property. So if you play safe by investing, carrying out your proper due diligence with the help of a professional, you'll be able to identify loopholes, lacunas, areas where you really do not have to tread in and then you withdraw, but with the proper due diligence, people have bought properties without land grabbing issues. I'm sure you're aware. And that's because they did proper due diligence. So it all boils down to that due diligence with the help of a professional. All right. It is still business in Saitan plus TV Africa, Michael Obiajo, legal practitioner is my guess, he is the head of legal and complied to panic limited. And we've been looking at wealth creation, how you can actually protect your return on investment. We'll take a quick break. There is more to expect when we return to join us again. All right, welcome back. It's still business in Saitan plus TV Africa. We are looking at wealth creation and my guess that Michael Obiajo is still with us. We've talked about land grabbing just before we went on that break. Let's still talk about investment per se. Most people believe that you really might need so much that if you don't have so much that you can't really go into some sort of investment. How true or how false is that? And how can you begin to enlighten Nigerians on that? Oh, well, that should be an outdated 19-year-old theory that there's really how much you need to invest. I mean, with the awareness created in investment currently in the world and even in Nigeria, there's a saying I'm used to in my early years of practicing in law and as well as real estate. For every investor, there is an investment and for every investment, there is an investor. So it's all about information, how accessible are you to information to know that with my little tuner somewhere, it can fetch me so-and-so investment. So yet again, information, access to information, due diligence, proper due diligence and all of that. So I mean, with little, people invest, like my forte is real estate. So I mean, you check very well. All over the property sector, there are people who have advised, who have advertised properties for low-income earners. There are so many advantages, like the government creating mortgage for low-income earners to be able to assess houses and practice for themselves. Recently, people could assess a part of their pensions to also get property. So these are information that has been put out in the public space that people can harness and get their investment with as little as they have. So you don't need to have so much to invest. Okay, there's still a great area. I'm glad you mentioned the issue of pension fund administration because some people believe it's just lots of money just lying idly. And of course, there is this talk of, which a pension, you can actually mortgage it to get them house, but how far have we really gone with that since this talk started? And how feasible is it really? Well, it's very feasible. It's very, very feasible. It started recently to, it was until the end of 2020, two or three months about, and I know a good number of people who have assessed through this medium. So the banks are willing to help. Of course, the CBN has these funds enough to back up this mortgage in the schemes. So the mortgage banks are also there willing to help. So it's feasible. There are people who have exploited it and I know a good number of people who have taken advantage of this and been able to get that percentage for their income. Of course, there's the NHF scheme as well where the government gives you about 15 million dollars with a single digit interest rate. Interest rate. And there's the normal mortgage scheme in general. So that's, and then most related companies as well, even where I am, offer the payment plan where people can purchase properties by paying in piecemeal, very flexible payment plan as well. So these are avenues whereby with your trickling income, you can still get some interest. Okay, fine. Still talking about protecting investment and getting good yields at the end of the day because it's not really wise after working and you're putting out some amount of it in savings and you want to invest that. At the end of the day, you meet some sort of unscrupulous developers. Why I said that? Because sometime in some four or five years ago, there was like a proliferation of developers asking people to come invest in real estate, come invest in landed properties or even out tried buying of houses. At the end of the day, most people were complaining that they didn't really get maybe the right papers. At the end of the day, there were some commotion and the developers ran away and at the end of the day, the investments were not protected as it is. So how do you protect yourself? How can you be sure that you're actually dealing with a genuine developer? Oh well, so I mean, for every question, there's an answer. So from the angle of the government, the government has seen these flaws in the real estate market. The real estate market is experiencing a boom. There's a proliferation of real estate companies who are perpetually doing the same thing. Well, obviously in between them, there's the genuine and there's the ingenuine. So the government has come up with regulatory bodies that guide and oversee the activities of these real estate companies. So at the national level, you have the red dan, which operates for Babuja, and for the Lagos level, which I know of Lagos so well, they've been very, very proactive in that. They have the Lasrara. So the Lasrara is a regulatory body that called the real estate player as a developer. So it says, come and register with us. This sets the rules, the boundaries, the guidelines that guides how real estate practice should go and speaking specifically to Lagos. And then if you as an investor wants to invest in a real estate company, you first of all check, do your due diligence check. If this company is registered with these regulatory bodies, why? Because of course, if the real estate company decides to go hourly, you have a body to report to pretty much sanction them. And then, like I mentioned earlier, nothing beats that due diligence. You see balls down to you. You owe yourself that right to conduct a due diligence on whatever property or real estate company intends to deal with. All right, so as we round off, I just want you to give your final advice. Just look straight at the camera and just advise someone who actually has had it tough in investment and that they've not really gotten all the returns that they expected. Maybe because they've fallen prey to unscrupulous people who came with them, all sorts of bogus investment plans. And what would you say to them as a way of rounding off on them going forward? I mean, experience, as they say, is the best teacher. I'm pretty much sure a lot of people have had their fingers bumped by investing with the wrong set of people. They still hope out there. There are still real estate companies out there who are genuine and doing what is right. So balls, if you've been on the show, balls down to a few things I've mentioned before. Firstly, you have to be aware of the industry you're looking to invest in. You also have to conduct a survey analysis on the risk, kind of risk you're willing to take. And nothing beats due diligence and getting a professional to assist you in having this due diligence. And look before you leap, that's what I would say is the perfect advice for everybody looking to invest. And hopefully you made the right choice this time. Well, thank you so much. And Michael, we do appreciate your time on the show. All right, I'm sure you have actually gotten several insights on how you can actually create wealth to your seven of course, you know, protect your investment and get them high returns, which are actually your expectations. And my guest has been Michael Obiadry, the head of legal and compliance of panic, that you're limited. And that's the size of the show for this week. I am Justin Alcadone. See you again next time. Bye for now.