Column No.6: Putting the actual Pandora’s Box to shame

A ‘Pandora’s box’ is a modern metaphor taken from an ancient Greek myth, with the proverbial phrase referring to a source of epic complications arising from one simple miscalculation. Maybe that’s what the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) considered while they painstakingly pored over massive amounts of hitherto-secret data to glean startling revelations of corruption, […]

A ‘Pandora’s box’ is a modern metaphor taken from an ancient Greek myth, with the proverbial phrase referring to a source of epic complications arising from one simple miscalculation. Maybe that’s what the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) considered while they painstakingly pored over massive amounts of hitherto-secret data to glean startling revelations of corruption, on an epic scale. The ICIJ led a team of more than 600 professionals worldwide, in a two-year collaboration that has so far revealed the financial secrets of not many current and former world leaders, as well as public officials in more than 91 countries. Nigeria included, of course.

The name ‘Pandora Papers’ is only fitting. The Greek myth goes that Pandora, the first woman on Earth, was created by the gods – who all gave her a gift each – to punish mankind, because Prometheus stole fire to give to them. She was given a box, and told that it contained special gifts, but she was not allowed to open the box, ever. It’s the Greek pantheon, so a load of shenanigans followed, and Pandora, who couldn’t keep her curiosity in check, opened the box and all the illnesses and hardships that gods had hidden in the box flooded out. 

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Fast-forward to today, and are the secrets flooding out, fast and furious enough to put the original Pandora ’s Box and its opening to shame. Russia might have probably the largest number of individuals covered by the Pandora Papers, but perhaps because the ones that directly concern me are the ones from Nigeria so far, those hit me with quite a wallop. Perhaps the most shocking to me, is the mention of Peter Obi, the ex-governor of Anambra State, widely regarded in Nigeria as a ‘good man’, at least by Nigerian standards. 

Obi, according to a report on Premium Times, owns businesses he “clandestinely set up and operated overseas, including in notorious tax and secrecy havens in ways that breached Nigerian laws”. Responding in the same report, admitted that he did not declare the companies, funds and properties they hold in his asset declaration filings with the Code of Conduct Bureau. The weirdest part is he claimed to be unaware that the law expected him to declare assets or companies he jointly owns with his family members or anyone else. To be honest, it doesn’t get any more ridiculous than that. And that’s after you consider that he was at least decent enough to respond, as bizarre as the response is. 

Then there’s Kebbi State governor Abubakar Bagudu, who is majorly made mention of regarding billions in the most powerful currencies of the world, way back from the Sani Abacha era, up till present-day Nigeria. Then there’s current acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Mr. Mohammed Bello-Koko making his stunning debut on the corruption scandal landscape via some homes he purchased in the UK with one being oddly-timed. That perennial favourite of corruption connoisseurs, Stella Oduah, also makes an appearance, thanks to some outlandish and expensive UK-based property purchases. Keeping up with the sums involved in these aforementioned cases is, frankly, giving me a headache. It’s enough to make me faint at a large gathering, like at Aso Villa, for example. I can only imagine how frantic things are at the EFCC right now, as they should. But are they?

The amounts being mentioned in the Pandora Papers are scary, even if they are but fractions of Nigeria’s stolen wealth. And that makes it more painful when one looks around and sees the hunger, the unemployment, the dilapidation, and the increasingly scary insecurity, all with direct ties to corruption. Whether you agree with me or not, other ‘boxes’ are opened in Nigeria, almost on a daily basis, with no detailed follow-ups in the media, and cases being swept under the carpet, or frustrated in courts. For instance, can anyone even remember what’s going on with the case of former EFCC boss, Mr. Ibrahim Magu? That’s my point. 

Before more seismic revelations come out, does anyone remember Wikileaks? Or the Panama Papers? Those have borne no real, tangible fruit in in Nigeria, apart from nourishing the craziest of conspiracy theorists. Make no mistake, though: leaks are an incredibly good thing in our contemporary context. But the truth remains that opening a box – Pandora’s or whoever’s – will be a futile exercise if whoever is at the helm of things demonstrates zero will to do something about it. I eagerly await the names and details of the rest of the Nigerians whose dirty financial secrets are revealed via the Pandora Papers, not entirely because of some odd version of schadenfreude, but rather because I need receipts of some sort – any sort – to help me with the trauma of being Nigerian, and to quench our collective thirst for justice.