MMM participants plan to meet House of Reps to legalise scheme

Despite not been discouraged by the temporary closure of operations, members of popular money doubling scheme MMM Nigeria, plan to meet with the House of Representatives’ committees on finance and banking and currency to seek for government’s recognition of the scheme.

MMM community in Abuja, which is coordinating the planned meeting, said it hopes to submit a proposal for the amendment of the Banking and Other Financial Institutions Acts (BOFIA) to legalise the operations of the scheme and similar money initiatives in the country.

Chief Mike Chukwuma, a member of the committee speaking to New Telegraph, said MMM has helped immensely in easing the pains of recession.

He said instead of discouraging Nigerians from participating in the financial self-help scheme, the government should rather legalise its activities so that it could be monitored and regulated.

“We, the MMM family, are planning a meeting with the lawmakers in the House of Representatives. We want to discuss with both the committee on finance and that of banking and currency on the need to give MMM legal backing in the country.

“I am a beneficiary and I can attest to the fact that MMM came as a saviour to most of us; if not, the economic recession that this change government brought would have consumed most families," he added.

Chukwuma speaking further on the agenda of the meeting said: “we have engaged the services of financial experts and lawyers to draft a bill, which is aimed at amending the BOFIA law. We are educated people and we hope to engage the House members, being our representatives in the National Assembly.

We are mobilising our members from all over the country and they will all send representatives.”

Chukwuma, who said the interactive meeting would take place as soon as the National Assembly reconvenes from the Christmas and New Year holiday, explained that “at the moment, we are trying to establish contact with the Banking and Currency Committee chair, Hon. Jones Onyereri and his colleague in finance, and once we do that, we will reach an acceptable date.”

Recall that last year November, the lower chamber passed a resolution seeking the abolition of the financial policy and probe of its promoters in the country.

The lawmakers said MMM scheme promoters are fraudsters exploiting Nigeria's current poor economic condition to defraud them.

 A few weeks later MMM suspended its operations by “temporarily” freezing accounts of investors.

A circular sent out to all users in the second week of December 2016, had said the account has been frozen for a month.

The scheme put up a disclaimer on its website on Tuesday, December 13, informing Nigerians of a temporary freeze on payments to existing subscribers.

The scheme blamed a “heavy workload” being experienced by its servers and the panic caused by the Nigerian government and media for the development, but said it will be back by mid-January, 2017.