Health

Three richest

men in Nigeria have more wealth than 83m citizens, says Oxfam

Abubakar Yunus Abuja

Anew report released by Oxfam, an international confederation against poverty, says the three richest men in Nigeria have more wealth than 83 million citizens.

Oxfam released the global inequality report at the start of the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday.

In the document, titled, ‘survival of the richest’, the international non-governmental organisation (NGO) said the wealth of Nigerian billionaires has grown by a third since the start of COVID-19 pandemic without a corresponding increase in health budgets.

It also said the richest 0.003 percent of Nigerians (6,355 individuals worth $5 million and above) have 1.4 times more wealth than 107 million of the country’s citizens.

Oxfam said a wealth tax of 2 percent on the millionaires, 3 percent on those with wealth above $50 million, and 5 percent on the Nigerian billionaires would raise $3.2 billion annually.

According to the organisation, the revenue gained from the wealth tax would be enough to double health spending as Nigeria has one of the lowest health budgets in the world.

Commenting on the report, Vincent Ahonsi, country director, Oxfam International, said superrich Nigerians are not paying their taxes.

“While millions of Nigerians are unsure where their next meals will come from, the super-rich are getting richer and not paying their fair share of taxes but taking advantage of the complexities and loopholes in the tax legislation, as well as the lack of transparency and accountability in tax implementation, thereby depriving the country of the revenue needed for social protection and inequality reduction.”

“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else.

“Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships — just the superyachts.”

Ahonsi also said, to have a more secure and prosperous society, Nigeria needs to purposely work to reduce inequality, generate more tax revenues from the rich, spend more on health, education, agriculture and social protection; and provide

Housing deficit: FG, NECA to inaugurate

1,071 houses in eight states

Abubakar Yunus Abuja

The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) says it will inaugurate 1,071 completed houses in eight project sites nationwide.

The bank disclosed this in a statement signed by Timan Elayo, group head, corporate communications, FMBN, on Tuesday.

FMBN said the housing units are part of the over 3,560 homes under phases one and two of the national affordable housing delivery programme.

It said the housing scheme is a collaboration between the bank and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), and the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA).

The firm said the programme aims to build and deliver decent, safe, and quality housing for Nigerian workers at a price that they can afford.

It added that the house types are based on proven social housing models and comprise one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units, with prices ranging from N3.1 million to N8.3 million.

According to the bank, the commissioning exercise will be held in eight states on Thursday, January 19, 2023.

The states include: Akure, Ondo state; Yola, Adamawa state; Katsina, Abakiliki, Ebonyi state; Damaturu, Yobe state; Sokoto, Maiduguri, Borno; as well as Kogi state.

FMBN noted that the joint implementation committee (JIC) of the programme, comprising NLC, TUC, and NECA, approved the commissioning exercise at its meeting at the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.

Speaking on development, Hamman Madu, managing director, FMBN, revelled in the completion of the first batch of the housing units, while applauding the labour centres for their cooperation and support.

“We are excited at the progress that we have made on the national affordable housing delivery programme. Indeed, it is a historic initiative as it marks the first time that FMBN and the organised labour and NECA are working together on the basis of a realistic and acceptable framework for delivering affordable housing to Nigerian workers,” Madu said.

He added that the stakeholders’ involvement and contributions to the project design make the scheme a fitfor-purpose tool that will deliver houses that workers can afford.

This, Madu said, is part of the overall national efforts toward redressing the huge housing deficit that experts now estimate to be over 22 million housing units.

Economic uncertainty may affect ability to find decent jobs in 2023, UN warns

Abubakar Yunus Abuja

The global economic stagnation may make finding a decent and wellpaid job harder this year, says a new report.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) said in a report released on Monday, global employment growth will only be at 1.0 per cent in 2023, less than half the level in 2022.

Global unemployment, on the other hand, will affect 208 million people at a rate of 5.8 per cent.

The United Nations (UN) labour agency warned, many workers would have to accept lower quality jobs, often at very low pay, sometimes with insufficient hours.

“Without access to social protection, many people simply cannot afford to be without a job. They often accept any kind of work, often at very low pay and with inconvenient or insufficient hours,” the report reads.

“The projected slowdown is therefore likely to force workers to accept jobs of worse quality than they might enjoy in better economic conditions.

“Furthermore, with prices rising faster than nominal wages, workers will experience rapidly declining disposable incomes even when they can keep their current jobs.”

The labour market deterioration is mainly due to emerging geopolitical tensions, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, uneven pandemic recovery, and continuing bottlenecks in global supply chains, according to the UN labour agency.

The report added that the global job gaps in terms of pay and social protection have affected women and youth more.

“Women and young people fare significantly worse in labour markets, a fact indicative of large inequalities in the world of work in many countries,” the report reads.

“Globally, the labour force participation rate of women stood at 47.4 per cent in 2022, compared with 72.3 per cent for men. The gap of 24.9 percentage points means that for every economically inactive man, there are two such women.

“Young people (aged 15–24) face severe difficulties in securing decent employment. Their unemployment rate is three times as high as that of adults (aged 25 or more).”

But ILO noted that in spite of the overall slowdown in employment growth, shortages of qualified labour remain a risk.

The UN agency said the slowdown in employment growth proved that gaps opened up by the COVID-19 crisis, globally, still exist and were not projected to be closed in the next two years.

It called for a “major increase in investment in education and training to unlock the full potential of the global labour force” as decent work is fundamental to social justice.

For Africa and the Arab states, the report added that although there is a decline in job provision, employment growth of around 3 per cent or more would be recorded.

“However, with their growing working-age populations, both regions are likely to see unemployment rates decline only modestly (from 7.4 to 7.3 per cent in Africa and 8.5 to 8.2 per cent in the Arab States),” the report reads.