Panama Papers: We’re Nigerians, ‘We No Dey Carry Last’

Saraki

The last may not have been heard about the Panama Papers even though the scandal has already consumed the Iceland's embattled Prime Minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. While the issues raised by the papers reverberate around the world with the British Prime Minister David Cameron being put on the spot to clarify his tax returns, it has been lost to most Nigerians that the Panama Papers contained more names from Nigeria than any other African country. With Nigeria’s rich history of corruption, this should not be surprising, but the surprise, is that there is no whimpers from the Presidency whose mandate is anchored on anti-corruption or other organs of government.

The Panama Papers allegedly indicted the Senate President Bukola Saraki, former Senate President David Mark, billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote and the Dantatas as well as billionaire former chief of army staff, General TY Danjuma among others. The only one that some sections of the media appear to be feasting on is Saraki, the embattled Senate President who is on trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) over his assets declaration, which the information from the papers has provided them another ammunition to intensify efforts to remove him from office.

While the government is tepid about the Panama Papers, I wonder if that would have been the case if the papers contain names like the former President Goodluck; former minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; or former minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Allison Madueke, who allegedly returned $90 billion ‘stolen fund’ yet the country’s president is cap in hand going to China to beg for paltry $2billion loan. If the aforementioned ‘looters’ were implicated, some sections of the media would have been feasting on it from various angles. We would have heard: “ We told you! That is where they hid our money and now we cannot import fuel. Jonathan is the reason Nigerians are suffering.”

In the same breath that the government would have used that as alibi for their inability to provide fuel, all manners of civil society groups would have been competing over who would outdo each other in issuing press statements demanding for the return of ‘our money’ from the tax haven and prosecution of the culprits to hilt.

It is not only in Panama Papers that Nigeria ‘no dey carry last’ as we say in local parlance, as even in terms of savagery and destruction of lives and property, we are world beaters. When I Google ‘the most dangerous terrorist group in the world’, I had hoped it would give me ISIS, but to my surprise it was Boko Haram that pumped up. According to UK’s Daily Mail, while Nigeria’s Boko Haram killed 6,664 in 2015, Islamic State, killed only 6,073. Read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3325005/The-dangerous-terrorist-group-world-NOT-ISIS-Boko-Haram-Figures-reveal-African-Islamists-killed-6-664-year-compared-Islamic-State-s-6-073.html

Thankfully it is not all doom and gloom as there is hope. The hope is in the younger generation, where Nigerian kids are breaking academic records in United States. Two teenage Nigerian high school students, Harold Ekeh and Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, have broken a record of being accepted by eight Ivy League schools in the United States. Ekeh is a 17-year-old senior student at Elmont Memorial High School, Long Island while Uwamanzu- Nna is a high-school student from Long Island, New York. Schools within the Ivy League are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. The feat accomplished by the teenagers have made them celebrity of sort, appearing in Fox News, CNN, NBC News and MSN among others, where they shared their story. I was proud as a Nigerian when I watched Augusta on Fox News, where she also revealed that she loved dancing, and the network showed video clip of the young lady wearing Nigerian traditional attire and displaying Nigeria’s traditional dance steps. The future is bright.