You recently celebrated your birthday, how does it feel being 94?

The celebration was fine and I was happy to see everyone around me (church) members, ministers, little children, among others. The church was full on that day. I am so happy. It reminds me of those days when I was energetic. I am no longer as energetic as I used to be.

 What particular event in your childhood remains unforgettable to you?

That would be my days in primary school. I attended Ake Abeokuta Primary School. I remember very well that my headmaster was the father of Prof Wole Soyinka. I attended that school until I left Abeokuta for Lagos.

My father was the late Pa John and my mother, Mama Kehinde John. She was a twin but the Taiwo (twin sister) had died long before I was born. I had a nice time growing up. The law, for us then, was you dared not miss going to church. Every Sunday morning, we attended Sunday School and services in the afternoon and evening. We were trained that way and we got used to it. My mum used to make adire (batik) and she was called Mama Alaaro. I used to follow her to the market to sell adire whenever the market day fell on a Saturday. Also, sometimes if I wasnt in school, I helped her to make adire patterns. Nobody took over the adire business from my mother because we had to go to school.

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The issue is this and people need to be aware of it; fraudsters have their clear targets who are mostly those without clear knowledge of how financial systems operate; taking advantage of their ignorance in promising to triple cash assets within a short period of time.

Take the American Elizabeth Holmes, for instance, the first female self-made billionaire and the founder of Theranos which became Silicon Valleys golden child at some point, expanding rapidly, and raising over a billion dollars in funding, whose investors are now seeking for their money following its collapse. The company crashed down when it became public knowledge that its technology intended for the medical revolution produced inaccurate test results about cancer and diabetes risking public health safety in the process. Holmes is now under trial for massively embellishing the firms performance to financial sponsors as a strategy to gain their investment support.

Like the Nigerian investment scam, Elizabeth Holmes targeted people with little or no experience in the financial sector. Her list of investors includes Henry Kissinger (former United States Secretary of State), Jim Mattis (retired Marine Corps four-star general), George Shultz (former United States Secretary of State), Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, and William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense).

People in the middle class desperate to increase their wealth are often the target in Nigeria by Ponzi scheme operators with the clear intention of defrauding them.

To avert investment scams, potential investors need to bother requesting for Security and Exchange Commission operating authorisation which is what legitimises capital market operations, and request for financial statements as audited by a reputable audit company to detect whether monthly/annual revenue is understated or overstated.

Knowing how much a company is worth before committing any investment is also important as it demonstrates a clue of how investment can be recovered back in case of heavy loss or liquidation, according to Harvard Business Online. This can be detected through a thorough examination of a transparent book value method if the company has any, using information from its balance sheet or using a discounted cash flow model.

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