Three Nigerians wealthier than 83 million others

Oxfam in Nigeria on Monday revealed that the three richest people in the country are richer than 83 million Nigerians.

Oxfam announced this in a report titled “Davos Inequality Report 2023” was announced at a media briefing in Abuja on Monday, ahead of the global conference of world leaders scheduled for next week in Davos, Switzerland.

According to the report, the richest 0.003 percent of Nigerians (6,355 individuals worth $5 million and above) have 1.4 times the wealth of 107 million other Nigerians.

“A wealth tax of two percent for millionaires, three percent for those with wealth over $50 million and five percent for Nigerian billionaires will raise $3.2 billion annually. This will be enough to double health spending.

“Oxfam calls for more taxes on billionaires and not workers and is a message sent to world leaders before the World Economic Forum, WEF, organizes Davos 2023 where ‘Survival of the Richest’ was published on the opening day of the conference, when the world’s elite gathered in the resort Swiss skiing because extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased together for the first time in 25 years,” said the report.

The report also notes that a tax of up to five percent for the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

Oxfam’s country director in Nigeria, Vincent Ahonsi, who presented the report said the wealth of Nigerian billionaires has increased threefold since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Nigeria’s richest people own the wealth of more than 83 million Nigerians. The richest one percent earned nearly two-thirds of all the $42 trillion worth of new wealth created since 2020, almost twice as much as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population , said a new Oxfam report today. Over the past decade, the richest one percent have acquired about half of all new wealth,” Mr. Ahonsi was quoted as saying by Vanguard.

He said for more than five years, Nigeria spent an average of 9 percent of its income on debt service, and by 2020, before COVID, this is expected to be 29 percent or 56 billion.

This amount is almost four times the education and social protection budget, six times the health budget and 14 times the agriculture budget, he said.

Inequality

Mr. Ahonsi noted that although Nigeria has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world at only 3.6 percent in 2019, Nigeria will spend 80.6 percent of its income on debt service by 2022.

According to him, while millions of Nigerians are not sure where their next meal will come from, rich Nigerians are getting richer and are not paying the same taxes, but are taking advantage of the complexities and loopholes in the tax laws as well as the lack of transparency. and accountability in the implementation of taxes, thereby reducing the state from the revenue needed for social protection and reducing inequality.

“With more than 20 million children out of school, it is not worth it to continue to give the five rich and corporations taxes, incentives, and exemptions.

“With about six out of 10 Nigerians not having access to quality primary health services, an increasing number of disease outbreaks and out-of-pocket expenses, it is not fair that the wealth of Nigerian billionaires has grown three times since the beginning. The COVID-19 pandemic without an increase in the health budget that’s appropriate,” he said.

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To address the inequality gap, he says, taxing the rich and big corporations remains key.

“It’s time we destroyed the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. 40 years of tax cuts for the wealthy have shown that rising tides cannot lift all ships—only super yachts .

“To have a safer and more prosperous society, Nigeria must consciously reduce inequality, collect more tax revenue from the rich, spend more on health, education, agriculture and social protection, and provide fair, inclusive and sensitive opportunities gender. for the citizens,” he said.

Global Concerns

Meanwhile, Oxfam said on Monday that the world’s top one percent will get almost two-thirds of the $42 trillion in new wealth created from 2020.

In a new report released to coincide with the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the organization said that share is almost double the amount earned by the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population.

According to the report, entitled “Survival of the Richest”, the fortune of billionaires increases by $2.7 billion per day, while at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation exceeds wages.

The report notes that half of the world’s millionaires live in countries that do not have an inheritance tax for direct descendants, so they can give $5 trillion to their heirs, a figure that is more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Africa.