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I guess you already know who the richest man on the face of the earth is? He is America’s Bill Gates, the top cat of Microsoft. By Forbes latest ranking, he is valued at $46.5 billion ahead of Warren Buffet, also of the United States, worth $44 billion. Nobody in the world would snigger at the wealth of Bill Gates or any other billionaire among the Forbes top 20 billionaires. And why should anybody? We all know
what Gates does, how he makes his money, now computed in seconds. Microsoft is the heart of every computer from laptop to workstation.
Whereas IBM, Compaq, Zinox, Acer and other systems integrators would have to share the profit on every personal computer or laptop with other companies namely: Toshiba, Intel, Sony which manufacture the various components of any system, it is not so for Microsoft. Every system has an operating system. And for every operating system in your computer, Gates pockets all the money. In fact, for every computer churned out from any assembly plant, Gates bikes his way to the bank. And he has been doing so for decades.
But this article is not about Gates and his peers at the club of billionaires. There are many of them.
Lakshmi Mittal of the UK who shot up from 62nd position last year to number three this year. He is worth $25 billion, Carlos Slim Helu (Mexican), valued at $23.8 billion, Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud of Saudi Arabia worth $23.7 billion, Larry Ellison of Oracle, United States worth $18.4 billion and Michael Dell of Dell Computers also of the United States valued at $16.0 billion. No sane man can begrudge these people.
They worked hard, thought smart and are now reaping high yields on their respective investments. No Nigerian businessman or entrepreneur has ever made the Forbes top 100 grade.
However, there is yet another category of Forbes richest men and women. It is a ranking of the worth of those in government. A scan through the 2005 Forbes list of heads of government and state would shock any sane Nigerian, nay African.
The lesson here is simple. In civilised societies, holding public office is not a short cut to riches. In Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the reverse is the case. A day or two in government house changes the fortune of a man.
Here goes. By 2005 Forbes ranking, the richest head of government is Abdul Aziz, the King of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. He is worth $25 billion. He is followed by bin Talal Alsaud, the Saudi Prince worth $21.5 billion. The Sultan of Nahyan of Abu Dhabi follows closely at $20 billion. Then come the Sultan of Brunei presiding over $14.3 billion.
Media mogul and head of the Italian government, Silvio Berlusconi is next at $10 billion, the same with Rashid al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai.
There are many others. Note that all the afore-named heads of government save Berlusconi are of the royalty of their various nations. And because of the monarchical nature of their governments, they are rich by virtue of the wealth of their respective nations.
They preside over the wealth of their states hence their wealth is not ill-gotten. Berlusconi himself was already a billionaire before he got into government.
Now the surprise: Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the British Commonwealth is not a billionaire. Yes, she’s not. She’s worth only $660 million, the head of government of Canada, Paul Martin, is worth $225 million while President Fidel Castro of Cuba who has been president since I was a kid is worth a mere $150 million.
Let me jolt you even more: President George Bush of the United States and clearly the number one citizen of the world in worth just $15 million. Please, don’t forget that the annual budget of California, a state in U.S, for last year was in excess of $100 billion.
This will give you an idea of the staggering annual budget of America whose president still counts his money in millions, albeit a few millions. More shocks for you. President Jacques Chirac of France should be considered poor at $9 million.
It is even worse for Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister who despite his fine suit and shirt and deep British brogue can only boast of $3 million. Japan is a rich nation without a single drop of oil. Yet, her head of government Junichiro Koizumi is worth a meagre $2 million.
Ditto for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany valued at a microcosal $1 million, an amount that is not even enough for a Nigerian governor to buy a house in South Africa. Let’s not talk about houses in UK and US yet.
Now, you know the difference between a first world nation and a third world nation especially one rich in crude oil cash. In the first world, the system puts a check on the people in government such that they cannot contemplate stealing state funds; or to put it most succinctly, converting state treasury to personal purse.
In spite of all his charm, charisma and influence, President Bill Clinton left the US White House not any fiscally different from the pre-White House Clinton. Yet, he presided over the budget of the world’s strongest economy for eight years.
He did not misappropriate money already appropriated by Congress. He did not call the American budget "my budget" and treated it just like that. No, he played by the extant laws of the land. He was not bigger or presumed himself superior to the Supreme Court.
All the heads of government listed above presided over rich nations. They did not leave office obscenely richer than they were before they got in. In plain language, public office either elective or appointive, is not for amassing wealth.
Now juxtapose all these with what has become a norm in Nigeria where people enter government house as paupers, at best as average citizens, but leave richer than the country itself, or state or local government as the case may be.
Let’s do a little mental exercise. President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a public servant all his life, first a military officer with a splendid career that culminated in his becoming head of state, albeit by default. He would later return to be president.
But this does not adequately justify his current financial status. He is the proud owner of many farms, houses, schools including a university. Had Forbes looked in the direction of Africa, Obasanjo would have dwarfed the likes of Schroeder and Blair. Even then, Obasanjo is reputed for being austere and tempered with money.
Then entered IBB, the famed Maradona; by the time he left office, a lot has happened to this handsome military officer from Minna. His house in Minna alone is an insensitive poster for ostentation in a land where millions of people still survive on less than $1 per day.
During his tenure, the nation got hefty $12 billion excess cash from the projected price of crude oil courtesy of the Gulf War global oil price surge. Up till now, nobody, not even the flowers in Aso Rock, can account for the money. He, too, is a proud owner of many mansions, business concerns and a private university licence. All these put together would make Blair look like a boy, an apprentice.
And from the shadow entered the big deal, the late General Sani Abacha. They are still tracking the hundreds of millions of dollars he stashed away in foreign banks. He was so rich, he could hardly remember all his bank accounts, where they were and what they were worth. And he was not a businessman or entrepreneur in the mould of Bill Gates or Buffet.
He was just a stealth military officer who did open-eye for the interim head of government at that time, Ernest Shonekan, and chased him out of Aso Rock. Just like that. The rest of the story is aptly captured by what is now known as "Abacha Loot". But it is all so because Abacha is dead. Many believe that somehow, some day, we may have "IBB loot” or Obasanjo loot".
Today, every governor in Nigeria is a proud owner of at least a house in London, US, Germany or any other country that mattered. It is no big deal. In fact, it is if you don’t have one mansion in a choice neighbourhood in any of these countries. Add to that healthy foreign bank accounts and of course another bank, may be vault, inside the comfort of these marble homes.
Pray, what was a Nigerian governor doing with £10,000 in his pocket on the streets of London and an offshore bank account bleeding with over £2 million? What would another governor be doing with £1.8 million in cash money stacked in apple-pie order in one corner of his room in a London home. The same is said to have houses in the US and elsewhere.
Now this, for being the Inspector-General of Police for just two years Tafa Balogun became richer than Schroeder, Blair, Clinton, Chirac, Koizumi and Bush put together. More than N18 billion (Over £70 million) had been traced to him. That’s his wage for minding national security for two years. But Bush has been president of America for about five years, and he is not even worth half as much.
Dr Bukola Saraki, the governor of Kwara State has never been known as an entrepreneurial whiz kid. Except that he was a director in the badly run and now moribund Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria and later an aide of Obasanjo, he has not done any other big "job".
But he owns a £4.35 million (N1.06 billion) mansion on Bourne Street in South West London. That makes him richer than the chancellor of Germany, Schroeder, the Prime Minister of Japan and Tony Blair.
And I ask: Why are we the way we are? I think there must be something wrong with us. I’m beginning to think this disease called Corruption is not only in our character. It is deeper than that. It is in our blood. That is why a few of us are richer than the nation. It is incredible primitivity that a people could still behave the way we do in the 21st century. It hurts. It really does.
Transparency International is right after all. We are still corrupt.
