Demide was excited at the prospect of joining TGIC. She had read a lot about Tomie Balogun-its founder and what she had seemingly accomplished in the financial literacy space over the years. Four months down the line, Demide invited Michael, a colleague of hers, to join TGIC. Membership fees cost $500.
TGIC’s investment subsidiary-twelvevest put out investment opportunities on its platform for interested investors. Most of the opportunities were from Agropartnership and Farmforte and included investment offers on crops such as maize, sorghum, cashew, ginger, etc.
Demide and Michael invested in the above opportunities via the Twelvevest platform. Benefits of being in TGIC include the commitment Tomie gave to its over 1000 members to carry out due diligence on investments and curate unique investment opportunities for its members.
Fast forward to December 2021, where AP could not meet its contractual obligations to pay investors principal plus ROI on matured investments.
In the Telegram group of over 1000 members, there was understandably angst and agitation among the members. After what seemed like a never ending ghostly silence from Tomie, she stated categorically, that “I stand with my investment partners.” Investment partners for the avoidance of doubt are AP and Farmforte. To add to the consternation of members like Demide and Michael who had placed a lot of reliance on TGIC’s promise to undertake continuous diligence with respect to investments it put out, TGIC stated that the inability of AP to pay its investors was due to “technical glitches” and AP was working on this to ensure there was no reoccurrence.
It gets even interesting- members discovered that some of them had been surreptitiously migrated to the AP platform and while the few lucky ones who were on the Twelvevest platform were getting some of their payments, those on the AP platform were left out. During one of AP’s staged managed webinars, it released a payment scheme meant to demonstrate its “efforts” to meet its obligations. As questions were being raised on the practicability of the payment scheme and what Twelvevest was doing to ensure its members get paid, Tomie sent a response to one of its members stating amongst others that “I am done with taking responsibility for another company’s actions.”
Pertinent questions/observations:
Twelvevest has a disclaimer on its website stating among others that “Twelvevest is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or a broker or dealer.” We will return to this later.
TGIC through Twelvevest marketed Agropartnership investment offers to its members. The marketing was aggressively carried out and, on its newsletters, indicated when the investments will be open.
The marketing referred to in bullet point 2 above, was carried out not as signaling the availability of an investment but showing that Twelvevest believed in the investment and thus was recommending the investment. There are Youtube videos of Tomie Balogun explaining the viability of Agropartnership and its business model. As part of her curated investment opportunities peculiar to only its members, a dollar-denominated AP opportunity was also floated on the Twelvevest platform by Tomie’s partners-AP/Farmforte.
As a follow-up of the above, funds were mobilized for Agropartnership from TGIC/Twelvevest members running into several millions of Naira and dollars. Twelvevest then aggregated these monies and transferred to Agropartnership.
In a recent webinar meeting, Tomie informed members present that a commission was paid to her for her role in mobilizing funds for Agropartnership.
Twelvevest also carries out its due diligence on prospective investment opportunities and informs its members that it has carried out due diligence prior to any investment advertised on the platform. It is important to state that as a result of membership fees, Tomie’s webinars, her bold reference to Agropartnerships as her “business partners” (see Tomie’s Instagram post of September 11, 2021 @ 4.13pm) members like Demide and Michael had no reason to believe that proper due diligence was not being carried out and leaned heavily on Tomie’s expertise as a well-known financial educator and expert.
To underscore the fact that Tomie Balogun believed in the credibility of Agropartnership’s investment opportunities and its business operations, Tomie invited the owners/founders of Agropartnership to an online webinar to talk about their organization and why investing with them was sound business judgement. In the Youtube video (made around 2020) Tomie amongst other things affirmed its support for AP, stated that it was the best time to be well positioned in the agricultural sector as investor as there would be a foreseeable increase in demand for local produce in Nigeria.
Additionally, she stated that she supports Agropartnership and that the agricultural sector was a good sector in investment and would help to push the economy of Nigeria. Commenting further, she stated their business model was very different and they got it right from the very beginning. In her words “her experience has been very good”, and she had watched them grow and expand over the years knowing that they had the requisite skill and expertise, and their business model was structured to work.
Tomie Balogun claimed part of the due diligence carried out included site visits to Agropartnership. We are not sure at this point, if continuous due diligence was carried out or if financial statements of Agropartnership and its other entities were known to Twelvevest and TGIC. However, till date, there has been no financial statements of AP shown to TGIC and Tomie has hidden under the cover of “AP is a private entity.”
Note that at no time did Tomie or Twelvevest communicate to its members that some of them were being transferred to the Agropartnership platform against their privacy rights.
At a recent webinar, when the question was asked why some members were migrated to the Agropartnership forum, Tomie stated that the individual who carried out the action had since left the company and should not have taken this action.
The above issue in No 10 gave rise to disparities and conflicting payment schedules and delays. At this point Agropartnership also complained that they were having technical issues with their platform. This point was reinforced and reechoed by TGIC.
In the TGIC telegram group, any member who expresses a contrary view or gives a different opinion on the issues that are bedeviling the group is unilaterally restricted on the platform from posting any chats. The excuse ranges from “we need to protect people’s mental health” to “non-adherence to TGIC’s terms and conditions, and even “daring to post Tomie’s number on the chat box” for members to gain access. This particular point is interesting as Tomie’s number is actually on the telegram group. In saner climes, citizens have access to their MPs, senators, etc. Recall that recently a presidential aspirant declared his interest to contest for 2023 and provided his contact details as well as list of achievements.
Issues that arise for consideration:
While Agropartnership has been granting bogus interviews and stage-managed webinars on their commitment and ability to pay in 2023, there are no clear and specific ways to fulfil their contractual obligations. There is no outlined plan on how they intend to raise funds particularly in an election year. Additionally, no reasonable company would embark on rolling out their debts to mature at the same time. TGIC has also not been able to demonstrate what concrete steps are being taken to recover funds on behalf of its members.
What role did Tomie Balogun and TGIC/Twelvevest play in this whole saga? Can the disclaimer on TGIC’s website and newsletter preclude Tomie and her companies from culpability? It is beyond reasonable doubt that the actions taken by Tomie are at variance with the disclaimer on the website.
Can a business partner collect huge sums of money as commission and still be expected to conduct a proper, transparent and fair due diligence?
Why did TGIC/Twelvevest surreptitiously migrate some members of Twelvevest to Agropartnership platform in clear violation of their privacy and infringement rights?
What is the relationship of TGIC/Twelvevest to SEC? Considering the billions of monies invested, is TGIC/Twelvevest culpable as a fund manager/aggregator or as an investment club?
As concerned members of TGIC/Twelvevest with funds trapped in Agropartnership we are interested in answers to the above questions. The vicarious liability of TGIC/Twelvevest needs to be thoroughly examined.
This is pathetic! How Tomie and her investment club(TGIC) have decided to stand with their business partners (Agropartnership) at the expense of her paid club memebers
Tomie Balogun’s attitude and handling of this whole matter is disappointing and surprising.
She cares less about the pains of her members and kept spiting them with pictures and videos in various dresses in Dubai and all while they lavish in their woes.
She has been blocking agrieved investors and deleting their posts on social media…to the point of telling an aggrieved investor that she owes her or anyone else any explanation…such an arrogant girl!
She looks and appears good in public (celebrated everyday,) yet insensitive and arrogant to members of her TGiC (club).
Tomie attitude is appalling. She is not interested in fund recovery. She has changed terms the club just to protect herself. Only cares about keeping up appearances but not doing the job of a leader. Do stay away from TGIC.
Thank you so much for these expositions.
But, what are we going to do to put a stop to Nigeria/Nigerians being given a bad name in the global investment world?
This is the month of JULY that AP Promised(through their payment plan)to pay the 1st tranche to investors but no communication from them till now.
Is this how these people would be left alone to enjoy another people’s wealth while the owners are daily committing suicide out of frustration?
Somebody should please advise on the way forward….