Everyone is talking about the Dangote IPO. You've managed to put together ₦20,000, ₦50,000, or ₦200,000, and you think the best move is to buy Shares. But is it?
Before you ask, "How much can this investment make me?", there is another question I want you to ask first: "Is this the best job my money can do for me right now?"
I am not going to tell you the Dangote IPO is a good investment or a bad one, you decide, I will not to tell you to buy or to stay away. But here is what I will tell you, Share offerings like this are genuinely popular for several reasons.
What I want to challenge is that not so right assumption, that whenever a popular opportunity appears or that idea that because something is a good investment in general, it is automatically the right use of your money specifically, right now.
Those are two different questions, and confusing them is one of the most common ways people who are genuinely trying to build wealth end up further from it, not closer. I mean the very easy way to stay in thousands while aiming to be a millionaire
A good investment and the right use of your money are not the same thing
An investment can be well structured, backed by a real, profitable business, reasonably priced, and still be the wrong place for that your fifty N50,000. This sounds almost contradictory until you sit with it for a moment. Money does not have one job, depending on where you are in your financial journey.
Questions worth asking before the excitement decides for you…
Before committing money to any popular opportunity, including Dangote’s IPO/Shares, it is worth being honest with yourself about a few things.
Again, do you have debt that is quietly costing you more than the investment could realistically return? If you are carrying high interest debt, an app loan, an overdue balance accumulating interest, that debt is a guaranteed, ongoing cost. An investment's return is not guaranteed. Paying down expensive debt first is often the single highest, safest return available to you.
Is there a skill gap that is limiting what you can earn? Sometimes the most valuable use of N100,000 is a course, a certification, or training that materially changes your earning capacity for years afterward. An investment grows your money. The right skill can grow your income, which then grows every future investment you make.
Do you already have a business opportunity in front of you that needs capital more urgently than the investment does? If it is invested back into your own business would generate more than what the Shares would yield, the business is where that money belongs for now.
Do you have any basic financial structure at all, a sense of what you earn, what you spend, and what is actually left over? If you genuinely do not know that number yet, it is worth finding out before deciding what a leftover amount should do.
None of this means don't invest
If you have read through that list and your reserve is in place, your debt is manageable or nonexistent, your skills and income feel reasonably secure, and you are choosing this deliberately over other uses for the money, then genuinely, this may be exactly the right decision for you.
Money tends to build wealth most reliably when it is allowed to do the most urgent job first, then the next one, rather than being pulled toward whatever opportunity is loudest in a given month.
Not just "how much could this make me," but "is this genuinely the best job my money can do for me right now, compared to everything else it could be doing instead."
Sometimes the answer will be yes. The opportunity being popular does not make that answer wrong. It just should not be the reason the answer was decided.