There are a couple of these accounts I've been seeing on Twitter and Instagram lately. Picture this account name - @Growyourwealth: no face, no name, a stack-of-cash emoji for a photo, a bio reading "Building wealth one trade at a time." They start with market commentary like summarizing the daily gainers and losers on the Stock Exchange, which companies recently declared dividends, how much the CEOs of the banks are earning and generally factual and generic information.
Then the posts change shape and switch to something like a screenshot of their trading account with a stock showing double-digit gains. Their caption makes it seem like they're indeed turning all the information they've been posting into insights that are making them good money. It's often something like, "if you'd invested in XYZ like I did in January, you'd be up 60% by now." Or they share a screenshot of their dividend inflow asking you to calculate how much money they have in stocks if they're receiving these millions of Naira in dividends. The goal is often the same — to use their social media accounts as proof that their insights on the Nigerian stock or financial markets is going to make them richer and more successful than you are and you would be stupid if you're not taking actions based on their posts.
We've done this dance before. Anyone on Nigerian social media in 2016 remembers MMM, the "mutual aid" scheme promising 30% monthly returns, spreading through WhatsApp broadcasts and church car parks faster than any bank could advertise. People put their salaries in it on a promise that "Get Help" would arrive within days. When it froze that December, the panic was national news and yet within a few years, something recognizably similar was back, wearing better graphics and a Twitter bio instead of a broadcast message.
I admit that there is a genuine knowledge gap. Many people who would genuinely like to invest don't know where to start as things like asset allocation, risk profiling, price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, margins, solvency and liquidity ratios are foreign vocabulary, and there's no obvious, trusted place to learn them; school never really covered it even for finance students. That's the vacuum the finance influencers of today are now filling, an unmet demand to be taught. But there is a right way to teach. In 2017, the Kaduna State government reported that about two-thirds of the around 30,000 primary school teachers under the state's Universal Basic Education Board failed competency tests featuring primary-four-level questions. You can't teach what you don't have.
Before deep-diving into the technical aspects, there needs to be a consideration for the investor's psychology. In a society without real social safety nets, it is not surprising that most investors would be looking for any means, including investments, to double their wealth. Lose your job elsewhere and something is usually waiting to cushion the effect. It could be an unemployment benefit, a pension you can't be denied, a health system that won't bankrupt you the moment you fall ill. Those safety nets sometimes exist in Nigeria in the informal social contracts we hold through family, friendship, religious communities people belong to, and even the whatsapp groups we share with former old school mates.
Rightfully, Nigerians are concerned that inflation erodes savings and investments. After experiencing two recessions in the last 10 years, they are correct to think that the function of money as a store of value is more for the textbooks than the lived experiences of Nigerians. Healthcare is still paid out of pocket, in real time: the family WhatsApp group at 2am, asking who can send a hospital deposit before doctors will look at their relative, is a familiar scene.
So when I watch someone chase a tip from an anonymous account, I read it as arithmetic done partly under pressure, partly in hope, not necessarily carelessness. If nothing is waiting to catch you when you fall, your investment has to double as your own insurance policy, and an ordinary return stops feeling like enough. These finance influencers show "proof" that your money can work for you while you sleep.
There's an older wound underneath this too, predating every finance influencer active today. In 2008, the Nigerian stock market crashed after banks quietly manipulated their own share prices and extended margin loans to depositors who didn't understand the risk. The people running it walked away lightly - a plea bargain here, a case still unresolved sixteen years later there. Some of the people who lost their savings however never recovered. I remember an Accounting lecturer who spent the entire first year asking why we weren't investing, then illness after the crash, and gone from the faculty by the time I graduated. Many of that generation never came back and some still warn their younger relatives off investing today. Add a trust deficit to a knowledge gap and you have a clearer picture of the average Nigerian adult who sees these posts on social media and thinks they must not pass on the opportunity to turn their 2 to 4. The finance influencer answers both by being informal enough to feel trustworthy, urgent enough to feel worth the risk.
That appetite spreads beyond NGX tips into forex "mentors," prediction markets, and outright Ponzi schemes dressed up as investing. The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) May 2026 warning named WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and Telegram as the channels. Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX), a crypto scheme, collapsed in 2025, costing investors an estimated billion dollars, an incident that was a fresh coat of paint on the same MMM story.
Somewhat disheartening is that some of these accounts are run by people who work in the industry as analysts, portfolio managers, stockbrokers who are looking to use social media to monetize on the side. For professionals, this isn't a grey area: ethics require the profession's integrity above personal gain, and bar misrepresenting performance or any conduct that reflects poorly on it. A best-trade screenshot with losses left out is performance presentation dressed up as insight; pump a thinly-traded mid-cap to thousands of followers and you edge toward market manipulation.
Even when the tip is real, chasing it still isn't investing. NGX's own June 2026 numbers show institutional investors, not retail Nigerians, driving most of the current boom; retail transactions fell faster month-on-month than institutional ones. Most ordinary people are still standing outside the rally, watching gains happen to someone else's portfolio.
I don't think the answer is staying out of the market but there's a difference between wariness that locks you out, and wariness that asks you to only put money into what you could explain without pointing at a stranger's screenshot. If you can't say what the company does, why its price moved, or what happens if it moves the other way, you're not investing, you're borrowing someone else's conviction and hoping it holds up longer than MMM's did.
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The account will still be there next week, posting another green candle, asking for a DM. The least you owe yourself is knowing what they're actually selling you and whether you're the one funding the "gains" they're posting.
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