07 Jul 2009 |
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According to a report released in 2006 by the United Nations, following a study carried out by Helsinki-based institute, World Institute for Development Economics Research, (shunpiking.com) the richest two percent of adults own half of the world’s wealth; while ten percent control eighty five percent of global wealth. The director of the institute, Dr. Shorrocks, explained further: if the world’s population is reduced to a group of ten people, one person would hold $99 and the remaining nine would share $1.0. The above scenario is obviously worse in Africa and especially Nigeria. We could therefore expect that the richest one percent probably control ninety-nine percent of the total wealth; while the rest of us are contented with the remaining one percent. Aliko Dangote is the only billionaire and is closely followed by Femi Otedola. The source of wealth of the former is basically through a monopoly of some key commodities like cement and sugar while the latter became stupidly rich overnight, initially through oil bunkering and later the deliberate efforts of the former president Aremu Obasanjo. Some people might not know, but oil bunkering was never the exclusive preserve of the militants in the Niger Delta. It was a business that the rich and famous in Nigeria were heavily engaged in and there was no ethnic barrier to it. The Northerners and Southerners were both into it. I had first-hand knowledge back in 2002 when I was a young, bleary-eyed credit officer with one of those ‘cow-boy’ new generation banks. I was the account officer to one Hudah Nigeria Limited, owned by one Alhaji who lives somewhere in Festac Town and some young chaps from the South-West of Nigeria. The company took a N100.0 million naira credit facility and claimed to be lifting low pour fuel oil (LPFO) from the Niger Delta area and make supply to some unidentified buyers on the high sea (that is the modus operandi of oil bunkering) I was a dentist turned banker (probably the first one then) who only followed orders. During the transaction, Zenon’s name came up because Hudah needed a ship to lift this consignment of black oil. Zenon Oil provided the ship while my bank gave a guarantee that once the deal is concluded Hudah would pay Zenon. But if they fail to pay, my bank would be liable to reimburse Zenon. Anyway, the deal got really messy later on because bunkering is not for the faint-hearted. The rest is history because I later left the country for good. And my old bank has since been taken over by a much bigger bank that is under a Delta state-born, ruthless banker. The main thrust of my article is to give a message to the wretched ninety-nine percent in Nigeria; it is not a good one though. The message is that they will remain in abject poverty for at least another millennium and that is a fact. So, they had better get their mind around that fact. Life is about survival of the fittest (a phrase credited to Charles Darwin). And according to Darwin, species (including homo-sapiens) are continuously engaged in a competitive struggle for existence, which includes primarily a struggle for food to support growth, life and the reproduction of young individuals to continue the species in question. I have never seen or read anywhere where the rich suddenly became sympathetic to the sufferings of the poor and decided to redistribute wealth. It does not happen that way. I am also yet to see a scenario in which God came down to wipe out the greedy ruling class or the bourgeois. The only one that I have read is where people fought and demanded for what is rightly theirs, like what MEND is currently doing in the Niger Delta. I don’t care about criminality. Let me even play devil’s advocate. Which criminality is worse? A situation where MEND is kidnapping some rich idiots so that they too can have access to the commonwealth or where ninety-nine percent of the population are subjected to untold hardship by a mere one percent? The masses die needlessly from road accidents because the billions voted for road maintenance has been gobbled up by one party chieftain (Chief Anenih). The billions voted for power suddenly disappeared and the poor masses are left in total darkness. The ruling class come abroad for ordinary medical check-ups while thousands of children die from common malaria. The quality of life of the majority is so abysmal. The political class in Nigeria can be seen displaying this struggle of survival of the fittest and the last thing on their mind is the poor. Examples abound everywhere. A newspaper reported recently that Senator Iyiola Omisore, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, supported the deduction of N6.2 billion from the budget meant for education and healthcare in the Federal Capital Territory to fund the N25.0 billion expansion work on two major roads in Abuja. The Senator would definitely get the contract for the roadwork; it hardly matters if thousands of children would die from not having access to proper healthcare or education. But could anyone expect anything better from a murderer turned senator? Here is another story I picked up from the papers. The Minister of Special Duties Senator Ibrahim Kazaure was quoted as saying: “Nigerians will beg Yar’Adua.” According to the senator, and a former Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, if Nigerians knew the kind of person the current President is, they will ask him to rule Nigeria as long as he wishes. He didn’t stop there. He claimed further that Nigeria discovered the President quite late, and that he ought to have been President twenty years ago. Does this sound familiar? My dear senator will support anything that will put food on his table and sustain his lavish lifestyle. It hardly matters if Yar’Adua is a dead man walking who have no clue about governance. Sometime last week I received an e-mail from another Nigerian who feels sad about the level of poverty in Nigeria, our motherland. She wanted to know if I would like to be part of a group of professionals that she is putting together to contribute their own little quota in one form or the other. I gave her my full support and promised to contribute in my own little way. But that would only be treating the symptoms. We would only succeed in helping a few people in need through charity while the majority will continue to live in abject poverty. We cannot provide jobs for millions of jobless graduates; we cannot provide healthcare for the thousand of dying children and pregnant women; we could not possibly have the resources to maintain the roads. I am resident in a foreign country where the jobless are paid pittance to keep body and soul together pending the time where their situation improves; where the sick have access to quality healthcare, where children of the less privileged have a chance of getting good education, where a child is paid benefit from birth till the age of sixteen, where a child under sixteen is not allowed to work much less hawk ‘pure water’ in the scorching sun. The developed countries have their ten percent that are stupidly rich too but, they look out for the poor and make sure they have some hope in life. I refer to the industrialised world as the land of the living because even the poor are given a chance to have a taste of life. My motherland can be likened to a land of the dead because majority are not living in the real sense of it. The majority only came to this world, saw and will never get a chance to taste the good things of life. The ruling class will never let go of their hold on power except the people demand it from them like movement for the emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) is doing. Let every single person who wishes to live and have a taste of life give full support to the struggle to reclaim Nigeria from this rogue political class. Anything contrary, and the majority would continue to live in abject poverty probably till the next millennium and thereafter.
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