Chairman of Heirs Holdings and Founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony O. Elumelu, CON, has never hidden his love for mentoring
Part of his philosophy says “We believe in doing well and doing good”. This philosophy has guided him as a leading African philanthropist.
When State House Journalist were told that he was to give a talk on “Journalists and Plans for retirement” many State House reporters looked forward to the lecture with strong expectations and enthusiasm.
Journalists work all year round even forgetting to plan for a time when he will be too weak to work. Many hardly even go on leave if their employers ever have that as part of their conditions of service.
In 2015, the Tony Elumelu Foundation launched the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (#TEEP), with a seed capital of $100million to support the philosophy of grooming young Africans with strong entrepreneurial skills to achieve their desired goals.
The young entrepreneur cum Philanthropist knew that one of the greatest challenges faced by these multi talented Africans is access to such seed capital to drive their own creative passions towards success.
Part of the aim of his work is to “discover and support 10,000 African entrepreneurs over the next decade, with a target of creating 1 million new jobs and $10 billion in additional revenues in the process. In the first year of the programme, 1,000 entrepreneurs were selected from 51 African countries from a pool of over 20,000 applicants”
Tony Elumelu’s support for the seminar changed the atmosphere, as it also helped to attract the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo to the event.
In his address, Elumelu charged Journalists on the need for early preparations for retirement, planning a future around entrepreneurship as a sustainable retirement plan.
Elumelu, while noting the roles Journalists play in the society, he said they provide the vital information that help reshape and refocus the society but hardly find time to apply such Information into veritable means of securing their own future.
“Information is power and access to credible real-time information empowers citizens. Empowered citizens can hold leadership accountable”
Your job is critical and supportive to what we do in the private sector. What you do daily shapes what we do every day”.
He urged them to work out retirement built around entrepreneurship to not only develop the mind but build a career fuelled by passion and purpose.
According to him, “Retirement should be a stepping stone to a higher calling. Don’t just retire. Begin a new phase.”
Elumelu approached entrepreneurship from the angle of Africapitalism which he defined as the intersection of business, passion and purpose. He encouraged the journalists to pursue an after-retirement plan that combines all three. “Africapitalism is business driven by passion and purpose. Retire into what you are passionate about. Use your passion to drive your purpose”.
His presentation took a sound root in the fact that the Nigerian worker face excruciating retirement environment foisted by poor institutional frame work that ensure secured lives for workers, unlike their counterparts in other climes of the world.
Despite consensus that Nigerian worker ought to look forward with enthusiasm to retirement, with the kind of resources the nation is blessed with, the poor institutional arrangements have continued to make retirement a nightmare; many do not want to contemplate.
Workers are equipped with sound economic and intellectual investments as vehicle for transition to retirement.
Often, however, the challenge lies in devising on what to do with time on retirement as well as what is needed to do before retirement to enhance it.
Retirement plans focuses on enhancing “Financial security in retirement” as savings remains a rewarding habit when started early in a man’s Career
This is because a retiree needs about 70person of pre retirement income to maintain your life in retirement.
Thus Pre-retirement investment mix also makes opportunity for bigger savings easier.
The worker is also expected to be creative and seek acquisition of skills that will help in retirement.
But Vice-President drives the point succinctly home when he called on Journalists to plan early to avoid the pains of working and going home without benefits at the end of their careers.
For him, “employees, not only of the media, should be compelled to join the government’s contributory pension scheme.”
The Vice President also canvassed the need for private sector organisations to adhere strictly to the minimum wage structure in the country.
This is just frowned at nonpayment of salaries by owners of media houses
He listed several reasons why Journalists are poorly paid to include cheating by their employers, lack of proper regulatory mechanisms in the profession and low productivity.
“There are a few reasons in my view why remuneration is poor in the media houses, especially those who are formally engaged.”
“The first is that it is just simply cheating. There are owners of media that are just cheats. They just want to get something for nothing and that is not uncommon. It is a general malaise; it is not necessarily restricted to the media.”
“The private sector does not respect the minimum wage. Even if a minimum wage is set nationally it is not necessarily respected by the private sector and this is something that should be factored in to the status of a company and whether a company is even complying with the requirement
“Not just the minimum wage of the lowest paid person, but minimum wages across the board especially so that there is certain amount of regulation of how people are paid.”
Osinbajo who expressed concern over the poor remuneration in Media Houses, urged Journalists to embrace creativity to make themselves relevant to both their organisations and the society
The Vice President called on professional organisations to robustly engage media owners which do not pay their workers, adding: “We ought to have a debate on what kind of pay can stop you from accepting brown envelope or whatever.”
He also called on employers to comply with the contributory pension scheme, even as he urged journalists to “seek self improvement and be a sector expert” as a way of preparing themselves for the future.
“I realised first of all that this is not a profession from which one could make a decent living in the first place unless you find a really good way of doing so,” he said.
“But more importantly for me was the fact that you are just on your own. Journalism as a profession is so wide open. There are a few reasons in my view why remuneration is poor.
“The first is that it is just simply cheating. There are owners of media that are just cheats. They just want to get something from nothing and that is not uncommon, it is a general malaise. It is not necessarily restricted to the media.
“It is also the same in the legal profession. There many lawyers, if they tell you what they earn, you will certainly not want to be a lawyer.
“Entry into journalism is not vigorously enforced. Most professions are able to pay better because there are entry requirements that are rigorously enforced. Perhaps, not the case in journalism and for good reason.
“There are those who are formally trained as journalists but the profession will admit anybody at all even if you are not formally trained as a journalist and that is even becoming more so now with social media platforms, with blogs.”
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
