By Felix Khanoba
Billionaire wealth surged by more than 16 per cent in 2025, growing three times faster than the average rate recorded over the past five years and reaching an unprecedented $18.3 trillion, a new report by Oxfam has revealed as the World Economic Forum opens in Davos.
The report also finds that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens, underscoring what Oxfam describes as a dangerous concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the ultra-wealthy.
In Africa, the pace of wealth accumulation among billionaires has been even more striking.
According to the report, the wealth of African billionaires grew four times faster in 2025 than in the previous five years combined. In Nigeria, where citizens are grappling with the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, billionaire wealth expanded at nearly double the global average, rising by 36.5 per cent in just one year.
This widening gap is illustrated by Nigeria’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, whose fortune climbed to $24.8 billion during the period under review.
Titled “Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power”, the Oxfam report examines how the world’s wealthiest individuals are increasingly leveraging political influence to shape economic and social systems in ways that favour their interests.
The organisation argues that Nigeria’s tax structure offers one of the clearest examples of this “rule of the rich,” revealing how political connections enable billionaires to sidestep burdens that weigh heavily on ordinary citizens and small businesses.
One case study highlighted in the report shows that despite recording profit margins of 86 per cent, Dangote Cement paid an effective tax rate of just 2 per cent over the period analysed.
“While Nigerian small businesses are being choked by multiple taxes and ordinary citizens pay 100% of the price for government failure, the super-rich are paying effectively 2%,” said Tijani, Ahmed Hamza, Country Director, Oxfam in Nigeria.
“This is not just inequality; it is state capture. When the richest man makes more in a single morning than a worker on minimum wage earns in 35 years yet pays a lower effective tax rate than a teacher or nurse, the system is broken,” he added.
The rapid rise in billionaire wealth, the report notes, has coincided with a worsening debt crisis across the continent. In Africa, spending on debt servicing is now 150 per cent higher than the combined expenditure on education, healthcare and social protection.
“Nigeria is borrowing to pay debts because we refuse to tax the super-rich,” added Tijani, Ahmed Hamza. “We are starving our schools and hospitals to feed our creditors, while granting tax waivers to monopolies that are already posting record profits.”
Oxfam therefore urged the Nigerian government to usher in a new phase of public action aimed at reducing inequality.
Key recommendations include the introduction of a National Inequality Reduction Plan (NIRP) to dismantle monopolies that distort the economy, as well as a wealth tax on the super-rich.
The organisation estimates that a 1 per cent tax on net worth above $1 million could generate billions of dollars annually, enough to double Nigeria’s national health budget.
It also calls for a complete moratorium on tax holidays for already profitable corporations and stronger accountability mechanisms to promote the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including enhanced protection for freedoms of association, assembly and expression, as well as support for civil society organisations and trade unions.
