By Chinwendu Obienyi
As part of its efforts to attract Nigerians, especially youths, to invest in the Nigerian capital market, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is partnering the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to develop a curriculum on capital market studies to be taught in primary and secondary schools.
Speaking to the press during the 2nd quarter Capital Market Committee (CMC) meeting in Lagos recently, Director General (DG), SEC, Mounir Gwarzo, stated that the current trend of no interest in saving among youths in the country has become worrisome, adding that the commission is collaborating with the council in drafting the curriculum and content.
“Statistics show that people from the age of 20-35 are actually not investing in the capital market as only people from the range of 34-65 are the ones that have a stake in the capital market. So we need to cultivate the culture of investment from that level of youth and we are collaborating with NERDC to develop a curriculum on capital market studies to be taught in primary and secondary schools,” he explained.
According to him, “a committee is already in place preparing the curriculum and content while the commission has a budget in place for the financial literacy initiative because we think that is where the key area is. To do it at the university level won’t be much of a problem because most universities run courses on finance and management.”
Gwarzo, while directing the e-dividend committee to address the lingering issues surrounding electronic payment of dividends, said more publicity will be done to ensure more Nigerians participate in the initiative.
“This is the first time in the history of the Nigerian capital market that we are coming up with a robust and comprehensive publicity on this and other initiatives and it is going to be in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin English and it is going to run through the entire 36 states.
“There will be radio jingles in each of the states, so in our publicity we are going to leverage on the social media, we will be using television stations, channels, AIT, NTA and we will involve the print media (newspapers) and in the next three weeks, the publicity will be very robust and like I said, it will be in five languages,” he said.