By Babajide Komolafe

I visited a young couple on May 17th this year. They had a three-year-old daughter and lived in a one-room accommodation, sharing a toilet, kitchen and other amenities with other residents. Their only source of income was the meagre wage the husband earned delivering food orders by bicycle for a popular meal delivery platform. They had just a mattress and one plastic chair.

Towards the end of my visit and our discussion, I counselled them on the need to embrace the culture of savings and investment, to which they replied that they were already doing so. They informed me that they had been investing their money in a finance organisation and online platform called NNNRC (also known as the National Reading Culture or NRC platform).

I asked if they were sure the organisation was licensed and regulated by the government, and they responded confidently that it was. I then asked them to show me the online platform and, when I saw it, I told them that NNNRC was not licensed by the government and that it was not genuine. They argued that it was genuine and told me stories of close acquaintances who had benefited from investing on the platform.

However, and surprisingly (or perhaps I should not have been surprised), I received a call from the same couple on July 9th. With voices laden with tears, they lamented their inability to access the NNNRC website. The platform had become inaccessible, and the WhatsApp platform for users had ceased to function, with all messages deleted.

But I was shocked when the couple told me they had about N1.3 million invested in the platform, which represented all their savings. They said they had withdrawn only N150,000 from the platform since they started investing. They also told me about their colleagues and neighbours whom they had introduced to the platform and who had also lost money invested in it. I learnt that one of their friends invested N3 million just three days before the crash.

Of course, I commiserated with them and told them I could not help them in any way. I reminded them of our earlier discussion and my advice that the platform was neither government-licensed nor genuine, which they had refused to accept.

My investigation revealed that the NNNRC platform commenced operations sometime in September last year and crashed on July 9, 2026. Like this couple, many people lost millions of naira to the platform. However, some people benefited because they withdrew their money before the crash.

(To be continued).