‘Nigeria Still Viable Investment Haven’

The managing director and chief executive of Sigma Pensions, Mr. Dave Uduanu as well as other experts said, despite macroeconomic indicators, Nigeria remains a viable investment haven.

The experts stated this while discussing ‘Preserving Value in Turbulent Times’ at Sigma Pensions business roundtable in Lagos recently.

Panelist at the roundtable were: the chief marketing officer Ikeja Electric, Mr. Ugo Obi-Chukwu; co-founder and managing director, CardinalStone Capital Advisers, Mr. Femi Ogunjimi; vice president, Sahel Group, Ms. Tosin Ojo; principal at Actis, Ms.Folaseto Akin-Olugbade and the director, Real Estate, Actis, Ms. Funke Okubadejo.

Speaking on the investment climate in Nigeria, Uduanu said:  “Nigeria could be at an inflection point and for us to come out stronger we have to believe in markets, especially with unifying exchange rates.”

Saying there are huge potentials yet untapped in organising the informal sectors, technology as well using funding assets, he added that,” in terms of investments, there is a renewed focus on every alternative, whether it is real estate, or private equity.

on asset financing. Today, everybody, every school, every hospital, owns their real estate. You don’t need to own your real estate especially as the PFAs have a lot of liquidity and this liquidity can be used to finance assets.”

On his part, Ogunjimi said: “I think Nigeria is definitely investable. I have a bit of a contrarian view when it comes to investments. And I think is really usually institutions of turmoil that you create generational wealth because if you have a perfect environment, it’s hard to get any kind of investment when all the problems have been solved.

“So the question is, how do you look at the problems we have as opportunities? I do agree that those problems create a lot of challenges, especially for us as institutional investors but for people as individual investors, I think there are a lot of opportunities.”

He added that,  “what we see is that it’s still going to be a good market and there are several reasons why. Number one is the number of start-ups that are coming up, still continues to increase. There are so many more people now that are willing to write $20,000 checks $50,000 checks on their $100,000 checks.

“Secondly, there is a lot of dry powder, a lot of money institutional and otherwise, that actually is looking for where to invest globally. And so as long as you have businesses that have good promoters that willing and have the maturity to position themselves well, and as long as people are solving real-life problems, as long as entities are solving real-life problems, you’re going to continue to see interest.”

On her part, Akin-Olugbade noted that, investments should be targeted towards investing in companies and products that are solutions to problems in Nigeria.

She said:  “Nigeria is totally investable; I think fundamentally, investors should invest in businesses that are addressing the basic necessities of life.”

While Okubadejo harped on careful investments, he urged participants to hold value in real estate and seek for investments that offer inflation protection.