By Prof Remi Sonaiya
In recent times I have been confronted with “evidence” of the incredibly expensive lifestyle being lived by a class of Nigerians, displaying a level of opulence that one could not even have been capable of imagining. First, an acquaintance forwarded to me a video via WhatsApp captioned “Lagos to London: Britain’s new super-rich”, which portrays the lives of some Nigerians living in London, the jet-setting lives they lead and the kind of parties they throw. Like it was said in the video by the super-rich business mogul, Alexander Amosu, if you have money, your desire is to possess something that nobody else does. Thus, people literally have “diamonds on the soles of their shoes”, revealing glistening soles as they walk. They have mobile phones encased in pure gold and rimmed with diamonds.
Then, just a couple of days ago I sat at lunch with a British man on a visit to Nigeria and we got talking about my country. He wondered if I was aware of the unimaginably high flying lifestyles that some of my compatriots were living. He told me the story of two young men he had met at the Nicon Hilton Hotel in Abuja. They had arrived in a car which he considered to be one of the most expensive in the world, and wanting to find out more about them he went over to chat them up:
“Nice car”, he said, “how about servicing and repairs? Are there local mechanics who can handle this kind of car?”
“Oh, no big deal”, they replied, “whenever it needs servicing, we just put it on a plane and fly it to London.”
The lifestyle of the rich and famous has always been of interest to many people (and I must add that I often wonder why). People follow passionately the ups and downs of the personal lives of movie stars, well-known sportsmen and women, royalty, and other individuals whose lives play out at least partly in public view – who they are dating, where they go on vacation, what they wear, etc. I guess it is a price to pay for being a public figure in some particular category. Other public figures are there by the power of their function in society, and they are not followed in the same way. For example, nobody cares in any specific manner what Professor Wole Soyinka or Pastor Enoch Adeboye wears.
Nigerians are snapping up high-end properties around the world, from London to Dubai to New York. We are known to be big spenders, lovers of good (read expensive) things and, indeed, the good life. The video mentioned above states that Nigerians are the third biggest buyers of luxury goods in the United Kingdom, after the Middle Easterners and the Chinese. When Nigerians have money, they want to spend it in a way that people would recognise that they are in a class by themselves. Destination weddings have therefore become fashionable, and the celebrations sometimes are lavishly produced, with champagne flowing like a river. Sometimes, the rich employ the services of professional shoppers to help them pick out the very best goods.
So, what is this thing in the title about this kind of lifestyle being described as “senseless”? Actually, a few other adjectives came to mind: disgusting, pathetic, crazy, irresponsible. And more. So, what business of mine is it to judge people’s chosen lifestyle? Like some Nigerians would readily quip: Na your money demdey spend? Do people not have the right to spend their hard-earned money in whichever way they deem fit? Ah, there lies the first point of reservation – is it truly hard-earned money in many of these cases? For example, I suspect every single Nigerian who has made his or her fortune from the oil and gas sector of our economy, since we all know the level of corruption that had prevailed in that sector for decades. This is the sector where people with political connections were simply allocated oil blocks; it is the sector that produced the oil subsidy scam during which companies which did not import a single drop of refined petroleum received billions of naira in subsidy, just by tendering the appropriate papers. I still have not gotten over the admission by the Minister of Finance at that time that her ministry did not seek to verify that the fuel which companies claimed to have brought into the country was actually imported. Nigeria was made to pay for goods that were not seen!
Do we not have in the world examples of extremely rich individuals and what they do with their wealth? Bill Gates is the world’s richest man, and the source of his wealth is known. More importantly, however, is what Bill Gates chooses to do with his incredible fortune. Does he parade his children before the world, letting them throw lavish parties and irresponsibly squander the money he has made? Not at all. One is amazed by the many areas in which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation operates as donors around the world: from education to health (polio and malaria) to agriculture and many more. And Bill Gates actively recruits other rich people to give away most of their money to help solve the world’s problems.
There are schools and hospitals to be built, IDPs to be helped, and the best that some of Nigeria’s super-rich can do is flaunt luxury goods and out-of-this-world parties? Shame on them!