About Requiza
A union owned by the people who save into it
Requiza Cooperative Union is the cooperative branch of Requiza Empire. This page explains what a cooperative society actually is, how this one is organised, who records your money and when, and — just as important — which facts about the union have been published and which have not.
What a cooperative society is, if nobody has ever explained it to you
A cooperative society is a business that belongs to the people who use it. There are no outside owners waiting to be paid first. The members put in the capital, the society trades with that capital, and whatever the trading earns comes back to the members — because they are the owners, and there is nobody else for it to go to.
That is the entire idea. Everything else you will read on this site — the Saturday meeting, the ₦1,000 share, the twelve-month lock, the interest, the dividend on 31 December — is machinery built to do that one thing fairly, and to write down every naira while it happens.
A cooperative is therefore slower than a scheme and plainer than a bank. Nobody here can hand you a return before the businesses have earned one. What the union can do is show you the rule it works by, apply the same rule to every member, and keep the record where you can see it.
The bargain in four lines
- You subscribe capital. An ordinary share is ₦1,000. On any project the union opens, the smallest subscription is 100 shares — ₦100,000.
- You save with your cluster. Savings are captured online — daily, weekly or monthly — and the financial secretary records the entry the same day.
- The union trades with the capital. Each quarter it opens a new stream of income along the food chain, funded 20% by the cooperative and 80% by the members who subscribe shares.
- The union pays out at year end. Savings return with 30% interest after twelve uninterrupted months, and dividends from the cooperative's businesses are distributed on 31 December.
Your two pockets: savings and shares
New members mix these up constantly, and the difference is the difference between money you are owed and money you have put at work. Keep them apart in your head from the first Saturday.
Savings — your own money, held by the union
Owed to you- The money stays yours. The union holds it and records every entry against your name.
- Entries are captured online: daily, weekly or monthly, whichever you keep to.
- It is locked for twelve months — weekly and uninterrupted — before withdrawal.
- It returns with 30% annual interest, paid at the end of your financial year.
- After three months of consistent savings you may request a loan from the union.
- The union has not published a minimum weekly amount. Ask the office before you plan around one.
Shares — a piece of the business itself
Owned by you- An ordinary share is ₦1,000. The minimum subscription on a project is 100 shares.
- Shares are ownership, not a deposit. They buy you a share of what a business earns.
- The cooperative funds 20% of each quarterly project; members subscribe the other 80%.
- Dividends are distributed at the end of the financial year, 31 December, to members who qualify.
- If a business has a poor year there is less to distribute, or none. That is the honest half of the sentence “the members own it”.
Told honestly
It is not a bank, and it is not an investment scheme
Both comparisons get made, and neither is right. A bank borrows your money and lends it on. A return scheme pays old members from new members' money until the new members stop arriving. A cooperative does a third thing: it hands the business to the people who save into it. Here are the same five questions asked of all three.
| Question | A bank | A return scheme | This union |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns it? | Shareholders you will never meet. | The promoters. You are a customer of theirs, never an owner. | The members. Once you subscribe shares, that includes you. |
| Where does your return come from? | The bank lends your deposit out and keeps most of the margin. | Usually from the money paid in by the people who joined after you. That is why they end suddenly. | From what the union's businesses earn, and from the interest term the union has published for savings. |
| What do you own at the end of it? | A claim on your balance, and nothing else. | Usually nothing you could name in a sentence. | Shares at ₦1,000 each in the projects you subscribed to, plus your savings. |
| Who covers you if it fails? | A deposit insurance scheme, up to a limit set by the regulator. | Nobody. There is rarely anything left to recover. | Nobody outside the union. Read that twice before you commit money to it. |
| What can you check before you join? | Published accounts and a named regulator. | A website, and a room full of confident people. | The operational terms, the record further down this page, and your own entry in the cluster's book. Some details are still to be published. |
What the union will not say to you
No cooperative can pay a return it has not earned. The 30% annual interest on savings and the 15% quarterly return on the Special Investment Package are terms the union has set for itself and published, and every rate on this site is printed with the condition attached to it. They are not guaranteed by any government or deposit protection scheme. Judge them the way you would judge any promise: by whether the people making it will show you their working.
A branch of Requiza Empire, with a boundary around it
Requiza Empire is the wider body. Requiza Cooperative Union is the branch of it that takes members' savings, issues shares and runs the cooperative's businesses. When you save on a Saturday, the entry goes into the union's books — not into a general pot.
The boundary matters more than the name does. The union keeps its own financial year, its own ledger and its own published terms. A cooperative that lets its money drift into whatever the wider group is doing this quarter stops being a cooperative, so the union draws the line and prints it.
Some of what Requiza Empire offers sits outside the cooperative altogether. The Get Digital programmes are training and market activity: they are not covered by the savings interest, they are not part of the dividend, and they carry their own risks and their own rules. This site labels them that way everywhere they appear, deliberately.
Inside the cooperative
Union business- Weekly savings, and the interest term attached to them.
- Ordinary shares and the quarterly projects members subscribe to.
- Loans to members after three months of consistent savings.
- Dividends from the cooperative's businesses at the end of the financial year.
- The clusters, their meetings, and the record the financial secretary keeps.
Outside it
Own risk, own rules- The Crypto Academy and market trading.
- Token launches for members building their own project.
- Registrations in third-party projects.
- Real world asset offers made outside the union's own projects.
Who does what
Three levels, and each one knows exactly what it is responsible for
The union office holds the clusters. A cluster holds its members. Nothing in between, and no layer whose job you cannot describe in a sentence. If a level of an organisation cannot be explained to a new member on their first Saturday, it should not exist.
Level one
The union office
Keeps the register of members, opens a new project each quarter, holds the union's accounts, and pays interest and dividends when they fall due. It sets no rate that is not in the published terms, and it is the only level that can open a project or issue shares against one.
Level two
The cluster
A group of members who meet in one place, every Saturday at 5:00pm. The cluster is where saving actually happens: members bring their entry, the financial secretary records it, and the week is closed in front of everybody who is present. A cluster has two officers — a chairperson and a financial secretary.
Every Saturday · 5:00pm
Level three
The member
Saves without interruption, subscribes shares in the projects they want a share of, may request a loan after three months, and updates their own back office once a month. A member is not a customer of this union. A member is one of its owners, which is why the record has to be readable by the person it belongs to.
The two officers every cluster has
The chairperson
Duties to be publishedChairs the Saturday meeting, keeps the cluster together week to week, and is the first person a member takes a question or a complaint to. When the answer has to come from the union office, the chairperson is the one who carries the question there and brings the answer back to the meeting.
The financial secretary
Duties to be publishedKeeps the cluster's money record. Every week, for every member, four columns: savings, loans, loan repayment, investment. The secretary reaches the entry page with an access code, so a cluster's record can only be written by the person the union has trusted with it, and the entries go online the same day.
What is not settled yet
The union has published the two roles. It has not yet published how officers are chosen, how long they serve, or how a member removes one who is not doing the work. Until it does, read the two descriptions above as an account of the work, not as an account of the union's constitution. Ask the office for the bye-laws; when they are published they will be linked from this page.
Decisions and dividends
The year the union keeps, and the year you keep
Two clocks run in this union, and mixing them up is the single most common mistake a new member makes. The union's financial year ends on 31 December. Your own financial year starts on your first Saturday and runs fifty-two weeks from there.
The dividend follows the union's clock: it is distributed at the end of the union's financial year, out of what the cooperative's businesses have earned, to members who have saved actively and without interruption for twelve months. The interest follows yours: 30% a year, paid at the end of the member's financial year, after twelve months of weekly saving without a break. Join in March and your interest falls due in March; the dividend still falls in December.
If those two dates do not line up neatly for you, that is normal — but ask the office to confirm your own dates in writing before you plan around them. A cooperative that will not put your dates in writing is not one to save with.
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Every Saturday, 5:00pm | Your cluster meets. You make your entry and the financial secretary records it against your name the same day. |
| Every quarter | The union opens a new stream of income. The cooperative funds 20% of the equity; members subscribe the remaining 80% at ₦1,000 a share, minimum 100 shares. |
| After 3 months of consistent savings | You become eligible to request a loan from the union. |
| After 12 uninterrupted months | Your savings may be withdrawn, and they carry 30% annual interest, paid at the end of your financial year. |
| 31 December | The union's financial year ends. Dividends from the cooperative's businesses are distributed to members with active, uninterrupted savings for twelve months. |
What has been published, and what has not
A member deciding how much of their money to trust to this union deserves to see both lists side by side. The second one is not an apology. It is the checklist you should be holding the union to, and every item on it will move to the first list on this page when it is published.
Published, and quoted exactly on this site
On the record- Ordinary share value: ₦1,000.
- Minimum subscription on a project: 100 shares, ₦100,000.
- Quarterly project equity split: 20% cooperative, 80% members.
- Savings lock before withdrawal: 12 months, weekly and uninterrupted.
- Interest on savings: 30% a year, paid at the end of the member's financial year.
- Special Investment Package: 15% quarterly return, separate from weekly savings.
- Loan eligibility: after 3 months of consistent savings.
- Dividend eligibility: active, uninterrupted savings for 12 months.
- Financial year end: 31 December. Cluster meetings: every Saturday, 5:00pm.
Not published yet — ask for these
Outstanding- The registration number, and the authority the union is registered with.
- The address of the registered office.
- The names of the officers of the union.
- The bye-laws: how officers are elected, how a general meeting is called, how a member votes.
- The union's auditor.
- The union's bank, and the account savings are held in.
- Audited accounts for any completed financial year.
Where the money is written down
How a member's money is recorded
Every naira that moves in this union is written against a member's name, in a week, by a named officer. Two people end up holding the same figure — the cluster's financial secretary and you — and that is the point of the arrangement. A record only one person can see is not a record; it is a claim.
| What is recorded | Who enters it | Where you see it | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Savings | Your cluster's financial secretary | Your back office, and the cluster's book at the meeting | Every week |
| Loan taken | Your cluster's financial secretary | Your back office, under loan status | When the loan is issued |
| Loan repayment | Your cluster's financial secretary | Your back office, against the outstanding balance | Every week until the loan is cleared |
| Investment | Your cluster's financial secretary | Your back office, with your investment position | When you invest |
| Shares subscribed | The union office | Your back office, under share position | When a project opens and you subscribe |
If your entry is wrong
Say so at the meeting, the same Saturday if you can, and never later than a month. The secretary has the week's book in front of them and the cluster is sitting there. A disagreement settled in the room on the day is a correction; the same disagreement raised a year later is an argument nobody can win.
Check your own figure each week in your back office. It is the cheapest habit in this union and the only one that protects you.
Why the entry page is gated
The financial secretary's entry page is reached with an access code issued to that cluster. It means a cluster's record can only be written by the person the union has trusted with it, and it means an entry can always be traced back to the officer who made it. You cannot write into it, and neither can anyone else who walks past a phone.
The parts of the union you can check today
Plenty of schemes have taken money from people in this region and disappeared, and the people who lost it were not foolish — they were given nothing to check. So here is the union in one block, including the parts that are still blank.
Where a line says to be published, it means exactly that: the union has not published it yet, and it is not being kept from you. Ask the office for it, write down the date you asked, and hold us to the answer. When it is published it will appear here and nowhere else first.
The union on the record
- Legal name
- Requiza Cooperative Union, a branch of Requiza Empire
- Registration
- To be published
- Registered office
- To be published
- Officers
- To be published
- Financial year
- Ends 31 December
- Meetings
- Every cluster meets on Saturday at 5:00pm
The motto, and what it commits us to
Empowering the members. Industrializing Africa.
The first half is this page: a union that belongs to its members, records their money where they can see it, and pays them what the terms say. The second half is the work the union intends to do with that money — five points, written out in full, none of them claimed as finished.