The Nigeria Business Moguls And Their Hypocritical Donations -By Mohammed Aliyu Baba

A business is seen as an organization or enterprise entity which engaged or carried out commercial, industrial, or professional production activities.

It involved an organized struggle and vigorous actions/operations by individuals or groups to produce and sell goods and services for the purpose of maximizing profit.

These sets of individuals engage and exploit every wherewithal; not necessarily to produce what people need for satisfaction, but chiefly to accumulate wealth through exploitative activities and unwarrantable products prices.

However, it is unarguable to some extent that businesses cannot survive without a favourable environment for small, medium and large businesses to thrive. This is achievable through effective and workable government policy formulations and good implementations of such policies; thereby creating wealth that could also nourish the nation’s economy. The survival of all businesses are therefore tied to the government’s economic, social and political policies or decisions. A situation that most at times, leads the key companies into lobbying the system to maintain their relevance within the spheres of the nation’s economy.

However, after accumulating the gains in surpluses, it is an unthinkable act of (some) giant companies to offer or give their donations to individuals, government or its organizations who are already swimming in the pool of wealth.

What sense does it make to drill a borehole in the house and begin to supply water to the government’s waterboard while your neighbors are thirsty and have no water to drink at all?

What sense does it make to buy a power generator in the house and begin to supply power to the PHCN office while your neighbors are in darkness?

This is completely unreasonable!

Recall that during the Covid-19 era, a series of donations were made by individuals and groups of companies amounted to billions of naira to curb the negative effect of the virus on the economy; thereby reducing the hardship faced by citizens as a result of the lockdown.

According to the record by the Central Bank of Nigeria, about #25.8 billion were donated by 107 Nigeria companies; where the likes of Dangote and Co contributed up to two billion naira each.

Surprisingly, some commercial banks who also donated millions of naira started retrenching some of their workers after the donation; as the effects of Covid-19 bit harder on the businesses. Their action led to the public outcry by customers and well meaning individuals who thought it would be better off if the banks used the donated funds to manage their workforce and credited the customers account directly; after all, the citizens were the direct bearers of the negative effects.

Sadly, citizens waited to receive the donations from the government but to no avail. All the donated funds and relief materials never reached the targeted poor citizens; until they could hold up no more, but burglarized the warehouses where the relief materials were hoarded and took the foodstuffs to quench their unbearable hunger. In essence, the government refused to share the donations received from the donors.

We thought such donors would learn one/two lessons from the Covid-19 situation and begin to channel their donations directly to the right people. But no; the owner of BUA GROUP proved us wrong. He keeps donating to government organizations, while hiking up the prices of his products.

For instance, a single sachet of BUA PASTA spaghetti is now two hundred and forty naira (around my place). This is something of #110 to #120 around here a few years back.

Yes, it’s now a general knowledge that the prices of (almost all) food items are skyrocketing day after day in the market. So, what sense does it make when a food producing/processing company is donating billions to government organizations while increasing the price of its product? As I write this, the prices of BUA products keep rising.

And earlier this year, the founder of BUA group reportedly donated a huge amount of money to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, for the construction of a hostel and one department. Few weeks later, one billion naira was donated to the university of Ibadan by the same company. I thought of it during the period of these donations that the consumers would pay for these donations sooner or later.

Look, there’s nothing like ‘donation’ in the mindset of a typical capitalist. In most cases, they only donate millions where it could give birth to billions; or better still, receive a business patent from the government or its agencies and get entitled to tax breaks.

If not, why not channel these billions into subsidies for its own product(s) instead of these hypocritical donations?
By doing so, it would subsidize the prices of BUA group produce and ultimately reduce the hardship and ease the market situation for the common man who are the largest among the consumers. And surely, they would be thankful for it.

But sadly, they won’t do so because there won’t be returns for them in any way.
May God Help Us.

MOHAMMED Aliyu Baba is a student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

He writes from Kaduna State, Nigeria.

He can be reached via: aliyu0380@gmail.com