Facts and Figures

I have been busy this week with all kind of meetings related to our pensionfund and the pensioners of Nigerian Breweries. I went to a pension forum of NB in Lagos which was a very colourful event since most of them wear 'happy colours'.

So here we go..... Facts and Figures and believe me when you read it you will think there is a typo in my writing. Nigeria has 192 million inhabitants. Of this inhabitants approx 50%, 90 million is working. And of this 90 million working Nigerians 8.1 million are in a pensionfund. When you are in a pensionfund then you also pay Personal Income Tax. So 4% of the inhabitants of Nigeria are paying Personal Income Tax. Most of these people are living in Lagos and Abuja, the capital and then comes Port Harcourt. After that not a lot is left. That doesn't mean that the other workers pay no taxes but these taxes are levy taxes so based on taxcollectors that are visiting sellers in the street and collect something.

On top of that more than 70% of the inhabitants of Nigeria are living below the poverty line. Most of you will not know how much that is. It is 1.90 U$D or 1.65 Euro per day. On top of that 55% of the inhabitants do not have electricity and for those who have, power cuts are daily.

Now something about age: 70% of the inhabitants of Nigeria is below 29 years old. In Nigeria you can retire as of 50 years of age. This sounds early but the life expectation for men in Nigeria is between 48 - 52 and for female it is 50 - 55 years old!!

Most of this information was shared with me by a man whom came of a family of 18 children. He added that this was reasonable..... Both brothers of his father had 32 and 36 children respectively.