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Wednesday, May 27,
2020 / 01:47 PM / OpEd By Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA /
Header Image Credit: MTN
In response
to the coronavirus pandemic, some of Nigeria's top billionaires made significant contributions in
the fight against Covid-19. Aliko Dangote donated N2 billion while Mike Adenuga
donated N3 billion. Femi Otedola, Folorunsho Alakija, Tony Elumelu, Jim Ovia
and Oba Otudeko donated N1 billion each. The CEOs of Access Bank and Guaranty
Trust Bank gave N1 billion each. This is not the first time that the
ultra-wealthy have come out to rescue needy Nigerians. In 2017, Dangote
Foundation pledged the sum of
$100m over five years to tackle malnutrition in Nigeria while in November 2019,
Femi Otedola made history when he contributed the largest donation by an
individual Nigerian with his N5 billion donation to
Save the Children. Nigeria's richest woman Folorunsho Alakija donated a Skills
Acquisition Centre to Yaba College of Technology in October 2018. Nigeria's
billionaire class has now joined its foreign counterparts in making a
difference to millions of people.
For the
first time in Nigeria's almost 60 years of existence, the country now has a
group of billionaires engaged in philanthropic activities. The amounts donated
are astronomical in a country that has so many people living below the
breadline - the ecstatic reactions from politicians, the media and the general
public to the philanthropic deeds should come as no surprise. When Otedola made
his donation to Save the Children, Aliko Dangote remarked, "Femi, you are no more a rich
man. You have joined the league of wealthy men" while Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo said, "We do not need to be billionaires to start doing
something. It is time for every one of us to decide that we really can make a
difference." In a tweet message, President Buhari saluted the
public-spiritedness of wealthy Nigerians and gave a special mention to
7 billionaires who contributed to the Covid-19 relief fund.
Nigeria's
Big Philanthropy Industrial Complex (NBPIC) has a place in Nigeria. It can help
soothe some of the issues the country faces, and it can complement government's
efforts to alleviate poverty. Some commentators suggest it satisfies human
needs, improves problem-solving skills and helps build robust networks.
Notwithstanding its supposed benefits, Big Philanthropy covers a multitude of
sins and is insufficient to resolve Nigeria's structural challenges.
Pope Francis
once wrote, "Inequality is the root of social evil." A key challenge confronting Nigeria
is the scale of inequality, which has resulted in the lack of opportunities to
most Nigerians. Nigeria is one of the most unequal societies in the world. The
emergence of NBPIC is a manifestation of the country's inequality problem. As
wealth has become more concentrated, so has the level of giving. Nigeria is
experiencing its version of the Gilded Age with the chasm between the 1%, and
99% reaching unsustainable levels.
Wealth and
poverty is the central paradox of modern-day Nigeria. On the one hand, Nigeria
is home to the richest black person and
the second richest black
woman on earth while four of the twenty richest Africans are Nigerians. On the
other hand, Nigeria is the poverty capital of
the world, with around 50% of the total population living in extreme poverty.
According to research by Oxfam International, the combined wealth of the five richest
Nigerians could end extreme poverty at a national level while
Aliko Dangote's annual income is enough to take 2 million poor Nigerians out of
poverty every year.
Though NBPIC
might be united in its desire to give back to society, yet it has little or
nothing to say about its members giving up their privileges and restructuring
the economic and political system, which currently works for the fortunate few,
and not the unfortunate many. At face value, Big Philanthropy appears to
benefit the masses; however, a closer examination would reveal that the
donation has some anaesthetising qualities, which ease the short-term pain, but
does not address the root cause of the problem.
A key
feature of NBPIC is its alignment to "Any government in power."
Nigeria is a resource-based economy, and some key constituents of NBPIC have
derived their wealth through government patronage, which enables them to build
monopolies. There is an incestuous arrangement between the politician class and
philantroligarchs whereby the former creates a rent-seeking atmosphere for the
latter to amass wealth and the latter refrains from criticising the former.
This conspiracy of silence, as evidenced by NBPICs inability to speak truth to
power allows the status quo to remain intact. Martin Luther King Jnr once said,
"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to
overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy
necessary. Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer, argued that those who
possess and control great wealth should, "Look at the economic structures
in their countries which have made that wealth possible and yet have created
conditions that make philanthropy necessary."
Nigeria's
philanthrocapitalists and philantroligarchs take the path of least resistance
by focusing on the symptom instead of the cause of the disease. The 1%
philanthropists have the ears of the government and ought to use the
opportunity to present the case of the 99% left bloodied on the Jericho road.
The amounts donated appear significant on an absolute basis, but on a relative
basis, it constitutes a small percentage of the donors overall wealth. For
instance, the N2 billion contributed by Dangote to the Covid-19 relief fund was
less than 1% of his $650 million dividends from
Dangote Cement. The Nigerian masses benefiting from the prominent
philanthropists are like the biblical Lazarus who ate the food that fell from
Dives table.
There needs
to be a redistribution of wealth for Nigeria to work for the many. However, the
government is in denial of the scale of inequality in the country while the
philanthrocapitalists and philantroligarchs are unwilling to give up their
privileges. When Oxfam published its research report on inequality in Nigeria,
instead of expressing concern about the level of poverty and inequality, the
then Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Hajia Zainab Ahmed was
"worried by the language, tone and style of the report." She also expressed her concern about
the definition of "elites" and feared that there might be a reaction
if the report fell into the hands of aggrieved individuals.
In January 2019, Dutch historian Rutger
Bregman courted controversy at the Davos World Economic Forum when he said it's
time to "Stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes."
Closer to home, it is also time for Nigeria's plutocrats to stop talking about
philanthropy and start talking about taxation. A 2017
Quartz Africa report revealed
that between 2010 and 2015 Dangote Cement paid an effective tax rate of just
over 1% on a total earning of around 1 trillion naira by relying on a "Particularly
aggressive interpretation of a Nigerian investment incentive known as 'Pioneer
Status' ". Furthermore, the Panama
Papers leak revealed that
some of Nigeria's prominent philanthropists had their assets warehoused in
foreign tax havens. If Nigeria's plutocrats pay their fair share of taxes, and
the government is willing to put the funds into productive use, it will go
along way in addressing Nigeria’s challenges.
The
oversized role played by NBPIC poses an existential threat to democracy in
Nigeria. In a functioning democracy, one voice equates to one vote, however, a
society that allows those with the deepest pockets to have loudest voices and
the attention of government is on the verge of pressing the destruct button. As
we approach the 21st anniversary of the fourth republic, Nigeria is gradually
morphing from a democracy into a "Nairacracy" which is a government
of the plutocrat, for the plutocrat by the plutocrats. When elites make
sizeable donations, it gets the attention of the government, which is a luxury
that small donors do not have. At a Gold Gala event organised by Femi Otedola's
daughter to raise funds for Save the Children, the Nigerian government was
represented by the Vice-President, senators, Minister of Industry, Trade and
Investment, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Minister of
Women Affairs and the Governors of Lagos State, Ogun State and Borno
State.
In the
build-up to the 2019 General Election, President Buhari named Aliko Dangote
and Femi Otedola as advisers to his re-election campaign. With the close
linkage between the elites and government officials, it shouldn't be surprising
to understand the government's inability to reform the system for the benefit
of the marginalised.
Large
corporate organisations like financial institutions play a prominent role in
philanthropy through their corporate social responsibility programmes. Forbes Africa ranked Access Bank as
the overall best company in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and
Sustainability in Nigeria for the year 2019. GT Bank, Access Bank, First Bank
of Nigeria, Zenith Bank and Keystone Bank donated N1 billion each to the Covid
relief fund. Without a doubt, these donations are much needed and appreciated
by Nigerians, but they should not disguise some home truths.
Five days
after making a N1 billion personal donation to the Covid-19 fund, Herbert
Wigwe, the Group Managing Director of Access Bank in a video message to his staff said the
company no longer needed security guards, cleaners and tea girls and suggested
that the bank might have to cut its outsourced workforce by 75% and slash
salaries. If Wigwe who claims to be a philanthropist realised that charity
begins at home and that charity is a poor substitute for justice, he probably
would not have gone on air to mouth such a condescending statement.
In 2018, the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) claimed that it had recovered N65 billion from
commercial banks for wrongful deductions and illegal charges on
deposits of customers and other transactions during the period 2012 to 2018.
While in February 2020, CBN reported it had recovered N60 billion in
excessive charges imposed on customers by some Nigerian banks. This robbing
Peter to pay Paul approach makes a mockery of Nigerian banks philanthropic CSR
initiatives.
A
fundamental assumption among the NBPIC is that the private sector is the best
instrument for bringing about social change due to the government's
inefficiency. The quintessential philanthrocapitalist is Tony Elumelu, whose
concept of Africapitalism is
loved by right-leaning think-tanks, the western media, business schools and
neo-liberal minded middle-class Nigerians. Philanthrocapitalists advocate a
trickle-down market-based approach towards social justice with the expectation
that funding a rising tide of a selected few would lift all the poor people in
the boat.
Philanthrocapitalists
and their apostles' aim to bring about social change by unleashing the forces
of capitalism via initiatives like impact investing while making a buck in the
process. Instead of supporting the dismantling of the underlying structural
causes of inequality and poverty such as corruption, rent-seeking, tax
avoidance, monopolies, labour flexibility, price gouging, state capture,
tribalism, election fraud and suppression of dissent, philanthrocapitalists take
the more convenient approach which they claim is a win-win. Africapitalism, a
derivative of the very same neoliberal ideology that plundered Africa centuries
ago, is being embraced by the descendants of Africa's former colonial masters.
They also see it as a way to lift the continent out of poverty. As Audre Lorde
eloquently put it, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's
house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
never enable us to bring about genuine change." Real social change will not come
from the top-down. It will have to include a bottom-up mass movement.
Where do we
go from here? Before anyone accuses me of playing the politics of envy and
being a hybrid of a player-hater and communist, I am not calling for an end to
Big Philanthropy. It doesn't have to be a case of plutocrats choosing between
making a philanthropic contribution or advocating for a restructuring of the
current economic order that favours the 1%. It is not contradistinction between
an either/or, it's a both/and. The plutocrats can still make their donations;
however, they must be willing to give up some of their power and privilege if
not for the common good, then at least for the narrow self-interest of
self-preservation.
About The Author
Ahmed Olayinka Sule is a CFA Charterholder,
photojournalist and social critic. He is an Alumnus of the University of Arts,
London; where he obtained a Certificate in Photojournalism. He has worked on
various photojournalism projects including Obama: The Impact, Jesus
Christ: The Impact, The Williams Sisters etc. He can be contacted via
e-mail at suleaos@gmail.com and via Twitter @Alatenumo
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