By Chinwendu Obienyi
Dr. Wilson Christson is the Chairman/CEO of King Solomon Capital Empire, an independent investment, project and trade finance firm with focus on Africa. He believes Nigeria has all it takes to become a great nation, but noted that the business community needs to discover local opportunities to grow their potential.
Through his multidimensional company, he has partnered selected public and private companies, government parastatals and developmental organisations in Africa to ensure successful business undertakings. Under the country’s economic recession, he has volunteered more of his services to help the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment of the economy through mentoring and capacity building to grow beyond the challenges of recession. He recently spoke on his firm’s operation.
Our services
The services of the company include project funding, high yield investment programmes, monetisation of instruments, financial instruments’ acquisition, certified financial trainings, commodities’ trading, financial consultancy and trade finance.
For over 30 years, Christson’s hands-on knowledge and expertise has helped thousands of clients develop winning strategies to realise competitive advantages. King Solomon Capital Empire, is registered in both Singapore and Nigeria and we are the premier global project funders, offshore banking services provider and financial instruments providers. Our collateral-based funding programmes provide innovative financing solutions to all our clients with attractive returns on investment.
King Solomon Capital Empire is involved in the acquisition, management and trading of several types of financial instruments and also provides these financial instruments to clients in need of recourse collateral as well as non-recourse collateral.
How to address economic recession
To address the Nigeria’s economic recession, what Nigeria needs at the moment is Africa’s first cash cow platform. It is a dynamic money generation platform that provides unlimited cash flow.
The concept of financial instrument leveraging platform, though relatively unheard of in Nigeria and most of Africa, is a financial idea that has been in existence for over 70 years. The platform’s trading protocol is often referred to as High Yield Investment Programme or Private Placement Programme.
It is mostly engaged in by high net worth individuals, corporations, financial institutions, pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and knowledgeable governments around the world, and by invitations only.
King Solomon Capital Empire, a pioneer financial instrument trading platform in Nigeria and Africa, can leverage on its 30 years experience in the industry to improve the much needed cash flow of organisations to expand their businesses, fund diversified projects and provide cash liquidity to pay employees. It is firmly equipped with seasoned financial engineers with many years of experience in the industry that can securely make a businessman’s financial dreams come true.
Fight against corruption
In order to make Nigerian’s economy viable again, the Federal and state governments must do everything constitutionally possible to destroy corruption because even if the economy is buoyant and there is still corruption, we will still go back into recession again and again. So it is important we tackle corruption at all levels so that people will no more convert the nation’s commonwealth into their private account and leave the youths of the country and other less privileged Nigerians in poverty.
In addition to that I think we also need to diversify the economy, because as long as it remained reliant on petroleum export we would continue to experience challenges when oil prices fall in the international market. In this wise, government must invest heavily on agriculture so we tap the potential in that sector.
This is important because if you consider the amount of money we spend annually on food import, you will know the impact such amount could have on other sectors of the economy if it were not used to import food and other items we can conveniently manufacture in this country.
Another area we as a nation should pay more attention is the solid minerals. We have a lot of solid minerals in Nigeria and yet we are not exploring them like is being done in Ghana. And we are not doing anything about it . So I think the economy has to be diversified so that we will be able to export things out to other countries to be able to generate more forex to meet our import needs and also stabilize the Naira exchange rate.
We cannot just keep on being a consuming nation for overseas products because by doing that we are not helping ourselves and we are not creating jobs for our youths.
As a nation and a leader in Africa Nigeria needs to balance things up in terms of our foreign reserves and that will happen if we diversify the economy and go back to agriculture, and take a more serious look into the mineral resources sector.
Financial engineering
Moreover, Nigeria now needs to develop technical financial engineers who can create money for entrepreneurs in the economy, instead of expanding the tentacles of borrowing to World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and all that. As a nation so richly endowed, I think we don’t need to borrow. I actually think that the government needs to engage companies like King Solomon Financial Empire, a money generation company to be able to assist them to generate funds that they needs to finance SMEs and startups.
I think one of the greatest mistake of government is its reliance on commercial banks whom we know are the ones killing the economy by the way raise interest rates on lending.
Commercial banks are the ones withholding the hands of progress of Nigeria’s economy because nobody is going to survive with the current high interest rates charged by Nigerian banks. And as long as interest rates are high, those who borrow will not be able to pay back their loans. There is no reason Nigeria cannot maintain a single digit interest rate at least for the SMEs which is the strength of this economy.
What government should do with looted funds
First I am of opinion that the Federal Government needs to launch a non-partisan Recovered Loots Management committee that will be able to thoroughly look into how looted funds should be expanded. In that committee there should be critical accountability on all recovered stolen money so that it can be used to develop the society, create employment opportunities and curb criminality in the society.
Key challenge of Nigerian entrepreneurs and SMEs
Well I think its lack of capital, and inability to have access to capital to expand their business.
Another major challenge, I see is exorbitant interest rate being charged by commercial banks, all of these are critical elements and I think the banks need to be innovative in trying to assist entrepreneurs with a single digit interest rate to make things much easier for them. I say this because without such concessions neither the SMEs nor the other companies would be able to grow. They wont even generate enough revenue to keep them in business for long.
The problem with Nigeria’s economy
Like I said before, Nigeria needs to diversify into the manufacturing, agriculture and other areas like solid minerals sector because all the countries with robust economies don’t rely on one product. They diversify into all of these areas and this will really open things up. There is a need also for the bank to work with all players of these critical industries to make capital available for them so they would be able to thrive in the economy successfully.
As for the technology and know how to drive these activities, Nigeria needs to partner countries like China and other emerging emerging economies particularly in Asia and Europe.
And to successfully leverage such benefits, government needs to create conducive environment for foreign investors to be able to come in and partner the local operators to open up the economy and create more jobs to make the country more vibrant. That is what we need to do, because China is more flexible as a country and we would go a long way if we are able to produce what the Chinese are producing or what the Europeans and Americans are producing and selling it, we can partner with them.
We can conveniently do this because over 70 percent of Nigerians are young so we have energy and tremendous opportunities with such labour force. We must try to partner with foreigners to open up opportunities. I know that when you knock down the taxes and all that, more businesses would come up.
How government can mobilise youth into agriculture
Agriculture is one sector that can really turn things around in this country but governments seem to be paying only lip service. Notwithstanding, government can create a new awareness about the potential of this sector and the diverse opportunities within the agricultural sector.
In this regard there old be a need of a re-orientation programme which will begin to see agriculture no more in the light it is viewed as an occupation for illiterate villagers but as business that can create agro-billionaires. So we must let the young ones know that if they go into agriculture, they can become as rich as Dangote and other billionaires in the world. It is big challenge to preach this message to change people’s perception about agriculture but I believe if we do we all be happy at the end of the day.
This will encourage the young ones to go into agriculture, its still in the mindset of the young ones that agriculture is not for me.But in order to stimulate the awareness of the youth, government need to create an awareness programme whereby those who have been extremely successful in the sector would be chosen as mentors and role models for them to know. In that case it would now be oh if these people can make it, we also can make it.
About King Solomon Capital Empire and impact so far On the business community
Its really been a lot within its covers but our ultimate goal really, is to be able to influence the society when it comes to capital provision and also as a premium alternative funding company bringing a lot of awareness to ways investors can be able to make more money. We have a long way to go and we are just starting.
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