Must Read!!! The rich are also poor

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It was the kind of news that was no news.  What the Oxfam International’s Inequality report said was not news to many Nigerians. The report, released on May 17, stated that the combined wealth of five richest Nigerians, put at $29.9 billion, could end extreme poverty in the country. The report, titled ‘Inequality in Nigeria, Exploring the Drivers,’ highlighted the immense and increasing gap between the stinking rich and the stinking poor in Nigeria. Oxfam is “an international confederation of charitable organisations focused on the alleviation of global poverty.”

Who are these super-rich five whose prosperity could make a difference to the landscape of poverty?  Quoting Forbes, the agency listed the five richest Nigerians as Aliko Dangote, with a net worth $14.4bn; Mike Adenuga, $9.9bn; Femi Otedola, $1.85bn; Folorunsho Alakija, $1.55bn; and Abdulsamad Rabiu, $1.1bn.

It is thought-provoking that the report said 112 million Nigerians lived in abject poverty, and that the richest man in Nigeria earned 8,000 times more in one day than a poor citizen would spend on basic needs in a year. The report listed Nigeria as one of the few countries where the number of people living in poverty was on the increase despite the growth of the economy, adding that 69 per cent of citizens in the North-East states were living below the poverty line, compared with 49 per cent in the South-West.

These identified five filthy rich Nigerians may need to enlighten their compatriots, especially the filthy poor, on what they consider to be the purpose of wealth, or what they think should be the point of prosperity. Beyond the phenomenal and dazzling affluence of these Nigerians, and the international focus on their billions of dollars, the question must be asked: How has the country which provided the space for their outstanding success benefited concretely from their deep pockets? In other words, what efforts have they made to help their poor compatriots rise materially?

Perhaps more fundamentally, it is important to reflect on not only the concept of social responsibility, but also the idea of wealth responsibility or the social duty of the wealthy.  It is illuminating that the legendary US billionaire, Bill Gates, named the world’s richest man by Forbes, provided what may be regarded as a useful guiding principle for the super-rich. He said in an interview: “I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.”

It is noteworthy that Gates initiated The Giving Pledge campaign in 2010 with co-US billionaire Warren Buffet. This is officially described as “an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in the world to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.”  It is noteworthy that the pledge is “a moral commitment to give,” and “the donation can happen either during the lifetime or after the death of the donor.”   A report said: “An estimate of the contribution promised by the first 40 donors, based on their aggregate wealth as at August 2010, was at least $125 billion…As of April 28, 2011, 69 billionaires had joined the campaign and pledged to give 50% or more of their wealth to charity…As of January 2015, 128 billionaire or former billionaire individuals and couples have signed the pledge.”

What are Nigeria’s Forbes billionaires doing?  Or perhaps more significantly, what are they thinking of doing? It cannot be enough to luxuriate in luxury, without a thought for the wretched of the country. However, it may be observed that the business of redeeming the country’s numerous poor is probably too critical to be left to what the super-rich might be thinking of doing or what they could do based on their thinking. The poverty of the affluent may be that they are not thinking of doing something or anything for the poor, or that they are doing little or nothing for the poor.

The Oxfam report also alleged that public office holders stole an estimated sum of $20tn from the treasury between 1960 and 2005. “Despite being Africa’s biggest economy, the share of the national budget allocated to education, health and social protection is one of the lowest in the region,” said the report.  It added:  “In 2012, Nigeria spent just 6.5 per cent of its national budget on education and just 3.5 per cent on health. By comparison, Ghana spent 18.5 per cent and 12.8 per cent, respectively in 2015. As a result, 57 million Nigerians lack safe water, over 130 million lack adequate sanitation and the country has more than 10 million children out of school.”

The portrait of indigence and its consequences is an inexcusably tragic irony for an oil-rich country, and puts a huge question mark on not only the quality of governance at all political levels in the country, but also the quality of the social responsibility of the rich.  It goes without saying that the country’s poor deserve an urgent solution.

The overriding concern is whether the people in power and the people who have the power of money are sufficiently interested in providing poverty-reducing opportunities, or even whether they care about anything beyond their pockets. In the final analysis, the picture is that the country’s poor languish at a hard place between the prosperity of power and the power of prosperity.

It is alarming that the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, responded to the report without appreciating its signification. The minister, who was represented by the Director of International Cooperation in the ministry, Mr. Eloho Samuel, said: “I was worried by the language, tone and style of the report, and this made me to ask what was at the back of the mind of the authors when the report was being written? Oxfam needs to tune the report and put in an element of diplomacy. The methodology used in the report also raises some questions. Is it for empirical or theoretical purpose? Oxfam needs to tell us in the report what it intends to achieve, what data was gathered, where it was gathered, the sample size and the uses of the data.”

Ahmed continued: “When I looked at the report, I was worried about certain concepts such as ‘who are the elite?’ There was no definition of terms, such as elite and poverty. More worrisome is if the report falls into the hands of aggrieved individuals, how would they react?

This is a big question. How would the people react to the news that is no news? There is no doubt that there is a ticking time bomb, which means a bomb blast is predictable.