The Pandora Papers and Data BGs in the Context of Two Nigeria’s Justice Systems

In the last three decades, political leaders and business elites have been putting on their toes in the areas of equitable resource distribution and social justice by the media and members of the civil society across the world. From the developing countries to the developed ones, stories about how the rich continue amassing wealth are being produced and reported every day.

The world has had Panama papers, which established a number of prominent global citizens in politics and business who have foreign businesses with the intent of evading taxes in their home countries or states. Information has it that “the Panama Papers 2016 divulgence is the largest leak of offshoring and tax avoidance documentation.” Select journalists across the world worked on a dataset with 11.5 million of documents with the aim of revealing injustices and establishing possible actions and policy directions for political and judicial leaders towards initiation and building of inclusive justice system.

However, in some countries, the outcomes of the Panama papers led to introduce new policies and laws. In their quest of establishing a sustainable justice system, another set of global journalists worked on 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data. Outcomes of the investigation have been published since October 3, 2021 in Nigeria and other countries in the world. Between October 3 and October 4, the and Nigerian public interest in Pandora papers and Panama papers surged, representing a huge interest in Panama papers 5 years after. During the days, analysis also shows that the Nigerian and global public had interest in corruption and the Pandora Papers.

Exhibit 1: Global and Nigerian Population Interest in 2 Days

The huge interest is not a surprise because Nigerians have been living with various forms of injustices over the years. Our analyst had earlier notes that “Like other countries in the world, Nigeria has two systems that are germane to its inclusive growth and development in all ramifications. To attain the desired peaceful environment across the country, criminal justice system devoid of ethnic, religious biases and social discrimination is imperative. For inclusive socioeconomic development, distribution and redistribution of economic resources without tribalism and ethnicity is a must.”

However, what is really surprising is the growth of data boys and girls, who are mostly youths being hired by the political and business elites for digital public relations purposes. They are being paid data stipend every month and used the data to create favourable status for them [the elites]. As the newspapers and journalists who worked on the Pandora Papers’ Project publish significant insights from their findings, our analysis has shown that the data boys and girls are not relenting in creating counter and alternative narratives of their paymasters’ involvement in the deals identified by the journalists.

Our analyst observes majority of the BGs, according to social networking analysis’ results, have direct and indirect relationships with the people who have been identified since the publication of stories from the Pandora Papers. Those who have direct relationship are the ones who share some family related features with the elites ‘found culpable’ by the journalists. BGs with the indirect relations are the ones who have been specifically hired by the elites for digital public relations, replying the perceived critics of their paymasters. As these relationships continue, our analyst notes that attaining sustainable social and economic justice systems would remain difficult because the youths who are expected to be the vanguards based on their digital power they possess have been hijacked by the elites.