My Entire Life Was Almost Derailed By Crippling Debt

Desperate times call for desperate measures. But for Nigerians, these desperate measures often end up in one money mistake or another. For this Nigerian man, his first mistake was falling for the lure of a get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme. 

In this conversation with PiggyVest, he shares how his world was rocked by the debt he incurred in the process, his road to recovery, and the lessons learnt.

So how did your debt problem start?

It dates back to 2017. But in the year leading up to that, there was a lot of frenzy about a certain Ponzi scheme, which, interestingly, I never partook in because I couldn’t understand the economics behind it. How could you tell me that I would just deposit money into a system and it would give me over 100% returns in a few weeks?

I also couldn’t see any product or service the system sold to generate money. I would ask everyone that tried to refer me how the system made their money, but I never got an answer. 

Smart. You knew better.

Yes. But fast-forward to 2017, I was posted to Abia State to serve. Unfortunately, Ponzi schemes were really popular among the corp members there. And they seemed to be paying off. Corpers were always celebrating the major returns they got from ‘investing’ after two to three weeks, and sometimes even as little as a week. 

I started to feel like a fool because I was the only one not reaping from this goldmine. They would use their terminologies around me, saying “I GHed here and PHed there,” but I would just watch from the sidelines feeling left out.

Out of fear of missing out, I decided to try one of the systems to see how legit it was.

The FOMO really hit you hard.

[Laughs] Yeah, but I played it safe at first. I put in ₦20k of my money, which I’ll call equity, into the system. In a little over a week, I got my equity plus 100% back

And that’s how they get you!

You know it! I was thrilled. So I increased my position and put in ₦60k, and the same thing happened. It was unbelievable. And that’s when greed overtook me. 

I reached out to a few people; I’ll call them my creditors. I didn’t tell them I was putting the money into a Ponzi scheme. Instead, I said I had a business I was setting up and needed financial support to expand it. 

They trusted me enough, all five of them, and they committed resources to the tune of ₦1.2million into my hands..

Woah. 

My plan was to put everything in and, in a week or two, get a minimum of another ₦1.2m in return. Unfortunately for me, that was the same time the system crashed, and it took all my investment along with it. That’s when the story began.

That must have sucked big time.

From that point, my life took a different turn. I couldn’t sleep. I would be out and just suddenly break down in tears. My creditors kept blowing up my phone. My brain would not shut off because I kept thinking of how I could pay off these debts.

Couldn’t you ask anybody for help?

I reached out to a family member, an uncle to be precise. He’s someone everyone took to be a wealthy man, so I thought he could help. I explained my predicament to him, hoping that he could give me the money to settle my creditors, and then I would be calm knowing that I would only have family to contend with.